ABI Prism® 7900HT Sequence Detection System ... - OpenWetWare

General Computer Maintenance
Maintenance
Schedule
7-46 System Maintenance
The computer connected to the 7900HT instrument requires regular maintenance to
ensure reliable operation of the ABI PRISM 7900HT Sequence Detection System
components. Applied Biosystems recommends the following tasks as part of routine
maintenance of the computer system:
Maintenance Task Perform
Archive or Remove Old SDS Files Weekly
Defragmenting the Hard Drive Monthly or before fragmentation reaches 10%
Upgrading the Operating System Software When available/advisable
Upgrading the 7900HT SDS Software When available
Developing a Data Management Strategy
Applied Biosystems recommends developing a strategy for dealing with the files
produced by the SDS software. During a single day of real-time operation, the
ABI PRISM 7900HT Sequence Detection System can generate over 200 MB of data.
Without a strategy for distributing and archiving SDS-related files, the 7900HT
instrument can easily fill the hard drive of the computer within just a few weeks of
operation. See “Managing Sequence Detection System Data” on page 2-15 for a
discussion of management strategies.
Archiving SDS Files To conserve space on the computer hard drive, SDS files can be archived using a
data compression utility. The compression utility archives files by encoding them in a
compressed form, thereby reducing the size of a file. SDS files can be compressed
and decompressed many times.
Several commercially available compression utilities are available. PKZIP and *.arc
are archive formats common to the Microsoft Windows operating system.