Data goodness Mostly in black and white By Dom

You must love your data! Lost data : Current imaging data in BRIC cost ~£5.1M, just for scanning costs! (2011)  no research  no publications  no jobs  no PhDs!  Sad Dom  Look after your data! –It looks after you Happy Dom

Data Storage Home directories: –ISIS home, U Home »Not for large amounts of imaging data Projects directory –ISIS, V: Big stuff goes here If you require large amounts of space –E.g. > 50 GB –LET ME KNOW IN ADVANCE!

Server goodness Why is the server a good place to store data? Mirror and parity - some errors - data can be easily recovered –BACKUPS: Tape backups, daily - 1 month retention if you have funding, processed data can be mirrored off site raw data is always mirrored offsite (ECDF) by default –Desktop PC's not reliable - no mirroring, no parity - some errors - data is lost (Often all of it) Network backups often fail –Machines turned off, Network busy –moving to a new system when I get time!

Data love Curation: Do this as you work! Plan your data use –Use meaningful folder names –Make 'README.txt' files with dates, names of students/employees involved, references to software, scripts and versions, purpose of experiment/processing. –Be tidy with your data - tidy up occasionally –Friday afternoon - quick tidy up –Big tidy up at end of experiment/ project/ phase/ year BE CAREFUL, don’t rush Data, spreadsheets, databases –Anonymisation –*** Repatriation keys***

Code and Scripts Coding: Testing –Make sure that the software you are using does exactly what you think it does! »Check every step for every image! –Do not use hard coded paths Use versioning software (ECDF)

Safe data is Happy data!