Disk Usage

Notes on Disk Usage

OMEIS manages the original files imported into OME, any pixels extracted from these files and any pixels generated during analysis. The disk space requirements can become enormous. There are two features implemented by omeis to mitigate this: Transparent inflation of compressed files and pixels, and transparent recovery of purged pixels from their original files. There are no special calls to inflate files or recover pixels - these are done automatically by omeis when necessary. The compression and purging of pixels is done by running a couple of daily system tasks (using cron). You can elect to have the cron jobs automatically setup by the installer.

Compression and pixel purging can reduce disk space requirements by a factor of 3 or more. Pixels generated using Set* commands instead of Convert* commands will not be purgeable, so their disk space can only be reclaimed by compression.