Box.com bulk transfer

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UAB has an Enterprise contract with Box.com, which is currently in BETA.

This page describes what we have learned about doing bulk-transfers of data.

Warning: size limitations

Box.com claims to have a 5G max filesize limit.

There was a rumor this would be increased in early 2016. Offically, this is all we know: https://community.box.com/t5/Managing-Your-Content/What-s-the-maximum-file-size-I-can-upload/ta-p/307

If you need to work around this, you can use the Linux "split" utility

# chop file into 4G pieces

split \
--bytes=4000m \
big_file.fastq.gz \
big_file.fastq.gz.split4g.

# record checksums of original and chunks

md5sum \
big_file.fastq.gz \
big_file.fastq.gz.split4g.* \
> big_file.fastq.gz.md5

Warning: time stamps

When using an FTP client to transfer data up, it is easy to lose both modification and creation timestamps. In particular, many clients will (optionally) preserve modification time, but few will (optionally) preserve creation date.

FTP client platform modification creation
SmartFTP GUI/Win Only/$$ yes can be enabled
lftp cmd_line/linux/free yes no
fileZilla GUI/linux+win/free can be enabled no
ftp_ssl cmd_line/linux/free yes no