Users who show up in person may prefer to back up their data on portable drives and take it with them.
Software
We recommend RSYNC for data transfers. It works with both portable drives and network transfers. It has many features which make it useful for beamlne backup. Perhaps the most important is the ability to do incremental transfers. Before actually copying any files, it will compare the source with the target and only copy files which are new or altered.
We currently support USB drives with USB-A or USB-C connections. SSD (solid state drives) are typically faster and more shock-resistant than hard disk drives. Make sure you have sufficient capacity for the data you plan to collect. Designate a drive for data transfer, and do not use that same drive for permanent storage. We support most Windows (VFAT, exFAT) and Linux (ext2,3,4, XFS) disk formats.
Portable computer
It is possible to bring a laptop, notebook or other portable computing device to gather your data. Gigabit ethernet connections to the CHESS network are available for this purpose. Wi-fi is more challenging, since wi-fi service is outsourced to the Cornell campus IT services, and is outside the CHESS firewall. In this situation, users can look into GLOBUS as described at Data transfer for CHESS users.
