The raw data from analyses are growing rapidly making their storage a serious problem. The AB Sciex 5600 TripleTOF generates 1-2 TB of data per month. This is expensive.; although 1 TB hard drives are ~$100, it's necessary to have several backups of the data and to replace the drives once a year.

We have considered using Cloud storage of the data. However, the current commercial cost is $0.15 per GB per month. This converts to $1,800 per TB per year. Life time-storage is $3,000 per TB. We estimate that this will lead to a new cost of $80,000/year for TMPL.

TMPL cannot absorb these costs without increasing rates. So, in future we will store the raw data collected on a set of samples for two months. At that time, investigators will be asked to come to the facility and collect these raw data in order to transfer them to their own computers or other storage devices. Regular notifications by e-mail of this action will be made during the two months after completion of data analysis.

Note that analyzed data placed in the LIMS (much smaller dataset) will be fully maintained by TMPL.

Please look at Challenges in data acquisition, storage and processing for NIH funded studies (PPT file)