How about the Petabox:
 http://www.capricorn-tech.com/ 
"Capricorn Technologies was founded in 2004 and provides petabyte-class storage solutions for organizations worldwide. Capricorn's PetaBox technology grew out of a search for high density, low cost, low power storage systems for the world's largest data collections"

http://www.archive.org/web/petabox.php 
"Internet Archives spins off PetaBox production to newly-formed Capricorn Technologies."
"Capricorn replicates the Internet Archive's successful deployment of the PetaBox for major academic institutions, digital preservationists, government agencies, HPC and major research sites, medical imaging providers, digital image repositories, storage outsourcing sites, and other enterprises around the globe."

Most importantly, in terms of funding for it: http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=121377
"Well, the Internet Archive is now officially a library according to the State of California! It turns out that to receive a particular kind of federal funding, you have to have your state sign off that you are a library. With a minimum amount of back and forth (including their saying "we have not evaluated something like the Internet Archive before") we were given the approval" 


My two cents addition to the suggestions made by others include something like a fee-based service for structural biology labs who solve protein structures to send their data/information to a company for a confidential review (of course such a company would need to be certified, like the ISO? and accepted by the user community). This would be similar to stories that I have heard of labs in some countries contracting out their paper writing (don't know how true that is!). A fee-based service would eliminate the problem of reviewers having to review all the experimental information presented in the structure and will also relieve the journals from additional pressure to check each and every structure before deposition. Also, with the numerous journals now publishing protein crystal structures, it may not be practical for all the journals to implement standardised policies for validation by the journal or the reviewer). Maybe this could be an arm of the PDB. As long as it is a fee based
verification service maybe it can be implemented without placing additional burden on existing staff (including graduate students/postdocs in individual labs having to supervise the maintenance of data archives). Considering the amount of money labs are spending on paying journals for publishing papers, colorful artwork, etc., it might be well worth spending say $1000-$2000/structure to get it validated instead of just spending that on printing fancy pictures. With the potential cost savings that labs are getting with the advent on high-throughput methods for expression, purification, crystallization, data collection, and structure determination, it shouldn't be too much to ask.

Regards,
Debanu.
--
Debanu Das,
Scientist, JCSG.
SSRL, Menlo Park, CA.

-----Original Message-----
From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Diana Tomchick
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 9:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ccp4bb] Depositing raw data

Providing a centralized archive of raw data for crystallographic images would be a great asset to everyone, but most especially to the original investigator.

I'm reminded of a conversation held with one of my postdoctoral mentors back in the mid 1990's. She was gazing at the rows of reel-to- reel tapes on the top shelf in our office, and lamenting that the data on most of these tapes was now unrecoverable due to the limited life span of magnetic tapes. This prompted her to encourage her students to deposit structure factors along with coordinates to the PDB (at a time when this was not yet required by any journal or granting agency), "so that our group will always have access to them, in case our backup schemes fail." I think she would have asked us to deposit our original images for the same reason, if it had been possible.

Most archivists will tell you that the best way to back up data is to make several copies and to store those copies in several different locations. This holds true for scientific data, printed material, photos, bank records, etc.

Diana

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Diana R. Tomchick
Associate Professor
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Department of Biochemistry
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Rm. ND10.214B	
Dallas, TX 75390-8816, U.S.A.	
Email: [log in to unmask]
214-645-6383 (phone)
214-645-6353 (fax)