People who raise their voices for a prolonged storage of raw images miss a simple fact that the volume of collected data increases proportionally if not faster than the cost of storage space drops. I just had an opportunity to collect data with the PILATUS detector at SSRL and say you that monster allows slicing the data 4-5 times thinner than other detectors do. Some people also like collecting very redundant data sets. Even now, transferring and storage of raw data from a synchrotron is a pain in the neck, but in a few years it may become simply impractical. And all this hassle is for the only real purpose of preventing data fraud? An't there a cheaper and more adequate solutions to the problem?
I also wonder why after the first occurrence of data fraud several years ago, PDB did not take any action to prevent its appearance in the future? Or administrative actions are simply impossible nowadays without a mega-dollar grant? On Apr 4, 2012, at 3:45 PM, Eric Bennett wrote: > > Then everyone's data can be lost at once in the next cloud failure. Progress! > > > "The hardware failed in such a way that we could not forensically restore the > data. What we were able to recover has been made available via a snapshot, > although the data is in such a state that it may have little to no utility..." > -Amazon to some of its cloud customers following their major crash last year > > > http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-04-28/tech/29958976_1_amazon-customer-customers-data-data-loss > > > -Eric > > > > On Apr 3, 2012, at 9:22 PM, Zhijie Li wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> Regarding the online image file storage issue, I just googled "cloud >> storage" and had a look at the current pricing of such services. To my >> surprise, some companies are offering unlimited storage for as low as $5 a >> month. So that's $600 for 10 years. I am afraid that these companies will >> feel really sorry to learn that there are some monsters called >> crystallographers living on our planet. >> >> In our lab, some pre-21st century data sets were stored on tapes, newer ones >> on DVD discs and IDE hard drives. All these media have become or will become >> obsolete pretty soon. Not to mention the positive relationship of getting >> CRC errors with the medium's age. Admittedly, it may become quite a job to >> upload all image files that the whole crystallographic community generates >> per year. But for individual labs, I think clouding data might become >> something worth thinking of. >> >> Zhijie >> >> >
