All data should be stored in two places, one of which must be off-site (i.e., not in the Warren Alpert Building). The server is the preferred location for off-site backup. Data acquisition routines and other important files should also be backed up regularly. Each person is responsible for their own backup.

HMS offers us a Dropbox business account with unlimited storage that can also be used for data backup and transfer. You can request an account from HMS IT here.

A custom MATLAB software package, “dataCzar,” can facilitate the backup of your data and code. It is available for download here. Instructions for installation and use are included. Just unzip the downloaded file and look for README.m.

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Software for backup and sync

Create Synchronicity#

There are numerous software solutions for backing up and synchronizing data across computers and mapped network drives (such as the lab server). One that I (Noah) have used and would recommend is “Create Synchronicity”, which is free software for windows: https://synchronicity.sourceforge.net/

After installing and opening, you will see a gui that looks like this:

Create a “profile” which is a directory / folder tree you would like to sync from one computer to the other: For bringing data from an aquisition computer to the server, use “Left to Right (Incremental)”. this will copy new data to your folder on the server and allow you to delete data on the aquisition computer without resulting in that data being deleted on the server. For analysis, you may wish to use two-ways incremental such that any files you make on your local computer are backed up to the server automatically. I suggest you do not use “mirror” since that can result in files being deleted.

You can exclude files frrom the sync by file extension or regular expressions. For example, when using this to sync data from the server to your computer for analysis, you may want to exclude tifs or other raw data types. You can use more complex regular expressions to filter in/out files (see https://synchronicity.sourceforge.net/help.html for more details).

You can preview a sync by right clicking the profile and selecting preview, after which it will give you a list of all the operations the program will perform on sync.

Once you have made your profile, right click on it to schedule backups:

I typically have experimental computer profiles scheduled to backup daily in the middle of the night. You can run a profile manually at any time by right clicking and selecting “preview” or “synchronize”.