Chromatography Forum

We recently started using the Xcalibur data system (2.0.7) for a GC/MS and were told by Thermo that we cannot acquire data directly to a network drive, only to the local C drive. Does anyone have a work around for this besides the obvious of copying data from the C to network after acquisition. We would really like to acquire directly to a network drive.

I'm surprised it doesn't work (an application shouldn't really be able to tell the nature of the disk-drive to which it is writing; that's the point of an operating system: to conceal hardware from software).

But I wouldn't do it. A script copying files automatically, after completion, to a second location is fine, honest. It means your instrument doesn't stop if the network goes wrong. It also means you have a local copy, and my experience of Xcalibur Qualbrowser opening network-shared data files is that even with a top-of-the-range super-fast local network, it takes much, much longer than looking at data on a local hard disk. It also potentially insulates your instrument PC from the rest of the world; you can hide your instrument PC behind a suitable gateway and avoid any changes that might affect its stability.

Agreed - networks fail to accurately transfer data more often than local hard drives fail to store it in the first place, so it is pretty well universal across all (C/S) data systems that local buffering/storage of files happens before data is transferred to a remote server.