Remote Data Access

General

Data acquired on instruments in CIF is archived in several ways, depending upon the instrument.  Much of the archived data makes its way into networked storage managed by IT Services. Within the cloud you will find the directory for your major professor, leading to directories for each researcher in the group, leading to directories for each instrument, leading to actual data files.

file structure CIF

You cannot write to data files while they are in the cloud; reprocessing data will require you to copy the files to your local computer.  Connect to data storage as a network drive then simply drag and drop the files to your local PC or Mac. (MNova softare does not require write access to process data, so you will be able to process data without copying it to your computer.)  You will typically be granted access to the cloud after your initial training, however, if you require access prior to training or access to another group's data for a project you are collaborating on, please contact Dr. Sarah Cady to gain authorization. You must be connected to the IASTATE network or connected to the ISU VPN to access the CIF data cloud. EDUROAM, Ames Lab subnet, or other on-campus networks will NOT work.  

See the procedures for accessing the CIF Research Data Cloud. 

Procedures for reprocessing previously acquired data will vary from instrument to instrument. Please speak with the appropriate CIF staff person to discuss your personal needs for data archival, retrieval, and reprocessing. 


Access to Data After Leaving ISU

In certain cases, CIF users require ongoing access to software or data after departing ISU. Once you have separated from ISU, your Net-ID will become inactive. However, your Net-ID can be sponsored by your major professor to enable ongoing access to both the MNova processing software license and the CIF data cloud. An active net ID will enable you to log in to the ISU VPN from an off campus location, which will enable you to ping the MNova license server and access the CIF data cloud. The sponsorship will last six months, however, it can be renewed. 

How to sponsor the Net-ID of someone separating from ISU:

  1. Have the person sponsoring the Net-ID (the major professor) go to https://asw.iastate.edu/ and login
  2. Click on Manage Sponsored Net-IDs
  3. Click Request Sponsorship of an existing (unsponsored) Net-ID 
  4. Have the sponsoring person (major professor) enter the Net-ID of the person departing (student/post-doc)
  5. Don't check renew
  6. Reason - type something along the lines of: Sally Jenkins is leaving ISU after defending her PhD, however, she needs ongoing access to Chemical Instrumentation Facility data and software to complete her thesis edits and several publications.
  7. Approver: select Campbell, Christoper (Lbrl Art/Sci Adm)
  8. Click Route Request

NMR Data

Once NMR data has been acquired, we encourage users to process their data using MNova or Topspin on one of the three processing stations in Hach Hall or one in Gilman Hall. This reduces wait time for other users when instrumentation is busy. Your data will be instantly available at the processing station once you save it on the spectrometer computer. All data acquired on the NMRs is kept locally for at least a year.  Your files are also moved to the CIF Research Data cloud as soon as you log out of the NMR. This allows you to access data from your office, lab or home computer. In order to process your data, you will need to install MNova and obtain a copy of our site license or install another suitable NMR processing software on your computer. 

  • See the procedures for accessing the CIF Research Data Cloud. You will receive access to the data cloud after your first NMR training session. If you require access to the cloud prior to training, or access to another group's data for a project you are collaborating on, please contact Sarah to gain authorization. 
  • If you had a previous version of MNova or MNova Lite installed (included with Chem Office Suite) please uninstall before proceeding with the installation of the full version. 
  • The full version of the MNova software can be downloaded from the MNova website. Installation instructions for PC and Mac can be found on the MNova website. Do not install the trial licenses.
  • The MNova site license and activation instructions are available here or by emailing Sarah.

X-ray Single Crystal Structure Determination

All single-crystal x-ray diffraction final results are available in the CIF Research cloud. The full framesets are typically very large files and they are archived on DVD's. If you would like to have a copy of framesets, please send a request to Dr. Arkady Ellern.

X-ray Powder Diffraction

Data acquired on the Rigaku powder diffractometer is available in the CIF Research cloud.  Copies of files are also kept locally on the Rigaku operation PC. You may also want to copy your data to your flash USB drive in ASCII (text) format as the size of all resulting files is very small.

Mass Spec Data

All mass spectrometry data is archived on the cloud. 

Other Instruments

Data from the various spectrophotometers (IR, UV-Vis, CD, EPR) is archived on the cloud. The processing software for these datasets may or may not be available to install on your own PC. There are also open source softwares available for processing. 

EPR data can be exported to ASCII (text) and opened with any plotting program. It is uploaded to the cloud once per night. EPR data can also be processed using the free, open-source software EasySpin, which runs inside MatLab. 

Elemental Analysis data (CHN/S Analyzer) will be emailed to you in Excel file format once your analyses have been completed.