Data Backup

It might be time to reiterate our policy for the backup and storage of data.

Generally: every user is responsible for their data. So after every session you should spend a minute or so ensuring that your data are well organized and stored at a safe location. You cannot expect us to search for your data several years after you measured them. This has happened more than once!

Connecting a flash-drive or external hard drive to the NMR computer is not a good option. The NMR computes run under Linux and we have seen cases where external storage devices and/or the NMR operating system were corrupted due to the use of flash-drives.

A favorite option is sending NMR data to your OneDrive account. Instructions can be found on this very website. Advantage is that your data are now 100% under your control. However you should work with your lab and PI to ensure that your NMR data are well documented and saved such that they are accessible and usable even after you might leave Georgia Tech. I have tested both OneDrive and Dropbox and found that OneDrive provides the easier, faster and more reliable options for our specific systems. This might have changed as both cloud-storage systems are continuously evolving.

We also support the option of backing up data to labarchives. This is an electronic web-based laboratory notebook. The backup provides you the option of storing your data together with your research findings. For instance you can post your (zipped) data together with a screenshot displaying your spectrum and a text, where you not your observations and findings. Instructions for labarchives are also on our Website.

We also do bi-weekly backups of each of our NMR systems, where data will be stored on an external server. Those backups however are mostly done in order to secure our systems from hard- and software failures. The retrieval of measured data is possible but extremely tedious such that we would do this only in exceptional cases.

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