Recording data on USB or Firewire devices

All our public computers provide USB ports in which you can plug your external hard disc or flash memory, and most of them also provide FireWire IEEE 1394 ports.

Recording data on DVDs

All our public computers can record DVDs. Please ask your Support Astronomer or Telescope Operator for a blank DVD. At ING we supply DVD-R discs as default, which have a total capacity of 4.7GB. You can either record your data using K3b application or from the command line:

Using K3b application:

As a default, the systems asks you what to do when you insert a blank DVD in the DVD writer.

Select "Create Data DVD with K3b" and click on OK. This will start K3b. If it doesn't start, then type "k3b" at the prompt of your terminal window, for instance, for intguest on INTDRPC1:

intguest@intdrpc1>k3b &

Once K3b starts, then you can select what data to record. At the top, enter the directory path of your files, for instance, "/obsdata/whta/20081201/" and you will see below the files in there. Then select the files that you want to save (press CTRL+A to select all) and drag the files to the window to the right below. If you can see that window but instead you are shown different options, click on the option "New Data DVD Project" and you will see the selected files window:

When done, press the "Burn" buttom to the left of the burning window. You will see a window with the different burning options.

The default options are good enough, but if you wish you can modify them. Click on "Burn" to start recording:

When finished, you could see a new window that opens because the system detects the already recorded disc. You can select between opening and checking that everything is there, or do nothing:

Close the burning window, exit K3b and save or discard the configuration of your recording:

From the command line:

In the directory where the files are located, type:

growisofs -Z /dev/dvdrw -R -J *

Please note that, depending on which PC you are logged on, the name of the DVD recording device might be different from /dev/dvdrw (ie. /dev/dvdrw1). Please see the available DVD devices by listing the directory /dev/dvd*.

The command growisofs offers more options, to see the manual, type:

man growisofs

Recording data on tapes

Tapes are provided to the users of the WFC on the INT. Please follow these instructions:

1. Insert the DDS3 (125m) tape in the drive /dev/nst0, on top of the data reduction machine. A DDS3 tape (12GB) should be able to store 150 runs in fits format, or about 300 using tar.
2. Open a new xterm on the Data Reduction machine and change directory to where the data are stored and record the data on the tape, e.g:

   $>cd /obsdata/inta/20040419

   $>tar cvf /dev/nst0 *.fit

   The above writes all '.fit' files in that directory to tape.

3. If you expect that this will take a long time, leave a note on the keyboard to prevent that day-time staff close the window stopping the tar before it is completed.