Archiving and Purging MALDI TOF/TOF™ Data and Creating Database Backups


Date: 05/31/2018
Categories: Academia Omics , Pharma CRO

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For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.


Answer

The general procedure for archiving and purging MALDI TOF/TOF™ data is:

  1. Archive one version of all data to an external hard drive.
  2. Archive and purge the same data to another hard drive.
  3. Restore one spotset to confirm proper archiving.
  4. Create a database backup on a separate and dedicated external hard drive.
Archiving/Purging
  1. Data should be archived and then purged after the data has been acquired and then searched, and at a minimum of once every two weeks.
  2. Data should be first archived without purging to one external backup drive, and then to another external drive and purged during this second archive.
  3. To test that the data was properly archived, restore one of the archived spotsets and then open that spotset to inspect a few spectra. If you can open and view this restored spotset, then the data was properly archived and you can proceed to backing up the database.
Backing up the D: drive Oracle database to a dedicated external hard drive.
  1. Database backups are done to preserve copies of the instrument methods and operating modes for the possible event that the database is lost.
  2. Before backing up the database, make sure all data is archived and purged. This will ensure that the database .dmp file is of a minimum size.
  3. Backing up the database can take a couple of hours, so do this in the evening when no plates need to be acquired.
  4. Ensure that there are at least three other backups of this database, going back at least two months. These may be needed if the database is lost due to corrupt files and the backups contain some of these corrupt files. We want at least one clean backup.
  5. Do not set the backups to "auto backup" as this will interrupt a current acquisition and it is easy to forget about the auto backup date when starting a plate acquisition.