Chromatography Forum

Hi everibody!

I would like to know how do you normally make the backup of the chromatograms files.. I would like to know also if you normally make that automatically or manually and which kind of support do you use (DVD, hard disk, etc..).

Thank you very much and have a good day!

Davide

This is depending on so many factors that a "one size fits all" answer is impossible. Two important factors are "regulated environment or not" and "data system database driven or not".

Assuming that your CDS is file based one of the following mechanisms may be used.

1. Manual - tedious and prone to mistakes, risky. Time consuming, requires discipline of lab staff.
2. File Server Storage - your IT department will make the backups for you if you have a datasystem that can store results centrally on a file server.
3. Data Management System - makes your archive searchable and a lot easier to adhere to regulatory compliance. Expensive.

If your datasystem is database driven, backing up periods of your results history is certainly possible but (much) more complex to achieve. It usually is not possible to manage individual results outside of the database.

JW
Applied Instruments

A more computer-knowledgeable person in my department purchased some 300 GB external Seagate hard drives for several of our chromatography units, especially those with 21CFR11. Unfortunately, with the requirement to sign on, this cannot be scheduled automatically in down times. I have been beginning new Databases every 650 MB (check the systems first of each month), archiving the old ones on the hard drive, and backing up that Databse onto CD as a "non-official" backup (FDA apparently discourages backup Databases). We will do a networked system someday. Our IT department doesn't yet understand that our equipment is not on the network, and that confuses them, their "out".

Why would they be off the network? Routers/switches/hubs can be so dogone cheap it's almost more expensive to leave them off. For my lab I'm trying to link all of the stacks to a central computer, and use the rest as database storage servers. Of course it sounds a lot more fancy than it really is.
My suggestion to yall is not to store anything on hard drives that are not set up in a RAID 1 array. All hard drives fail, eventually. It's a fact of life. The newer ones have added non-allocated space to make up for sectors that go bad. Basically when one sector goes bad, the data is transferred to a good back-up sector. It's all seamless to the user. This is a double edged sword. You'll never know what hit you when that last sector is used up. Given this, it's best to store financially and legally important science on RAID 1 drives.

Of course, that's just my take on it. To me it's a bit less expensive than CDs.