Researchers generated 32 million cattle genotypes—a huge amount of data they store and transport on Seagate hard drives.

Seagate storage solutions are helping veterinary researchers from Munich's prestigious  Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) study the genome of cattle—a storage-intensive undertaking that aims to pinpoint the genes that cause certain health problems for the animals.

The department of livestock breeding and general agricultural economics at LMU is currently conducting two major research projects that involve the genotyping—compiling a genetic "fingerprint" of the various breeds of cattle that graze outside Munich.

The genome of an organism is its entire hereditary information and is encoded in its DNA.

One of the research projects is aimed at finding a possible genetic relationship between fetal growth and difficult births in cattle. The other project is a comparison of eight different breeds of cattle, with the objective of identifying the genes that affect the functional biodiversity of cattle.

During the first quarter of 2008, the LMU scientists, using powerful new genetic-analysis systems from California-based Illumina, generated 32 million cattle genotypes. Prior to adopting Illumina's technology, a total of 800,000 genotypes were generated from 1995 to 2007. With such a vast increase in data traffic, the Munich researchers needed a high-capacity storage solution that also offered convenient portability and rugged security.

"Our research projects are complex and generate huge quantities of data, so it's extremely important for us to have secure and reliable storage," said Chris van der Meijden, an IT specialist at LMU’s veterinary faculty.

”Seagate's products give us peace of mind about the security of our data”

--Chris van der Meijden, IT specialist

Synchronization and transport of the research data was previously entrusted to a standard 1-GB flash-memory device, but scientists working on the project needed much more storage space. They now use high-capacity Seagate® FreeAgent® Desktop and Maxtor® OneTouch™ 4 Mini external hard drives to back up and transport their research data to their municipal laboratories.

Knowing their data is safe and secure allows the researchers to focus fully on their work. 

"Seagate's products give us peace of mind about the security of our data," said van der Meijden. "Now we're able to easily save and move the data, which is so important in a collaborative research environment like ours."

The FreeAgent Desktop external drive offers up to 1.5-TB of storage capacity, with a compact footprint that keeps desks free of clutter. With spin speeds of 7200 RPM, the FreeAgent Desktop drive delivers fast performance and instant access to files. The drive's pre-installed software automatically updates selected folders, ensuring that important data is always backed up, and it enables file sharing in different LMU locations.

The lightweight OneTouch 4 Mini drive, which weighs just 167 grams, offers up to 320 GB of storage—room for 102,400 digital photos or 320 hours of digital video. The compact drive automatically syncs files between computers so that the latest data is always available, and it's password-protected with two levels of security. 

Along with plenty of storage space, other important issues for LMU in choosing Seagate products included reliability and service.

"The reliability and ease of use of Seagate storage solutions were very convincing factors for us," van der Meijden said. "We were also impressed with Seagate's great customer service under the terms of its 5-year warranty for its external hard drives."

The researchers are now preparing to embark on a new project, which will focus on the selection of the Braunvieh (brown cattle) gene with the objective of conserving the Braunvieh breed.

"Seagate is honored that researchers at LMU entrust their critical work to our products," said Jon Van Bronkhorst, executive director of product marketing for Seagate's consumer solutions division.