Data Policies

Each user or group is responsible for archiving their own data on their own media. Data generated on the mass spectrometer is retained on the host computer for at least 6 months, after which time a courtesy backup is performed (data is burned to DVD). Courtesy backups are intended to be kept indefinitely, but since it is a courtesy backup there is no guarantee of it being available.

Note that data from the mass spectrometer is in a proprietary binary format and cannot be accessed without the proper software (i.e., QualBrowser). Utilities are available to convert the binary data files to xml.