Storage of Data
collaborators must have physical access to the drive or other means of sharing data. In summary, USB hard drives are valuable when moving
small volumes of data (approximately 100 Gb) where networks are not available, if a backup strategy is in place. As data volume increases the applicability of USB external drives decreases. Cloud storage. A number of “cloud” storage providers such
Figure 1: Schematics of a light-sheet microscope. A two-photon light-sheet microscope consists of illumination and detection systems. Two-photon laser light (red) from a femtosecond source (such as a Ti:Sapphire laser) is scanned at a 1 kHz rate by galvo mirrors on to the illumination objective that forms a sheet of light. The fluorescence (green) in a model zebrafish sample is excited only within that sheet and detected using a high-NA objective on a sCMOS camera. Image courtesy of Thorlabs.
across the various devices used for backup reduces the advan- tages of the “simple drag-and-drop” workflow. Tis is par- tially due to the hassle of determining which specific files may be located in which device, as well as the considerable time required for frequent transfers of large files. In addition, the bulky and wired nature of external hard drives further con- tributes to their inconvenience when having to use multiple drives. Tere is currently no easy way to streamline the process when using individual external hard drives for data backup. Data sharing is also difficult with USB external hard drives, as
as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Amazon and others offer a simple workflow: a folder on a workstation is available to drag- and-drop data as an extension of a local file system, and data are automatically protected from loss. Teoretically, the storage volume is unlimited, or specific recommendations may be given depending on usage and/or price. Institutions oſten offer free access to cloud storage solutions, which is appealing to research groups. Sharing is usually built in as an easy “share by link” function, and, since the service is Internet-based data, it can be shared virtually any place in the world. Data backup and version control (rollback) are great features that provide the ability to reverse any accidental deletion or overwriting of valuable files. Unfortunately, limitations on cloud storage oſten occur
when the amount of data being stored reaches beyond a few terabytes. Data transfer also depends on network stability and speed, which are oſten inconsistent. Tis inconsistency in data transfer, along with the common case of sharing a single acquisition computer for collection of data in a research set- ting, further limit the functionality of cloud storage, which requires uploading from a workstation. Furthermore, col- laborative storage, usually a necessity among lab members, is oſten difficult to set up. Although storage is oſten advertised as unlimited, it is rarely truly unlimited. Cloud storage providers oſten “throttle” or decrease bandwidth aſter a certain amount of data has been moved in a given period of time (for example, 15 GB per month). We faced this issue when “unlimited” cloud
Figure 2: Example of zebrafish brain images collected using light-sheet microscopy. (A) Top view of a zebrafish larvae at 6 days post-fertilization. Scale bar 1 mm. (B) Maximum intensity projection of whole-brain imaging with diffraction-limited resolution of neurons (green) and blood vessels (red) allows longitudinal observation of vertebrate brain development. Scale bar 100 μm. Inset: magnified section of image, scale bar 25 μm. (C) Two-photon light-sheet imaging of fluorescent calcium indicator GCaMP6s allows recording activity of 50,000 neurons with single-cell resolution and 1-second temporal resolution. Color coding depicts neurons’ axial location within the sample. Images collected using Truong/Fraser setup at the University of Southern California.
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