• Creating an Archive
• Using GUI-based programs
• Using Command Line (Terminal)
• Creating a .zip Archive
• Creating a .tar.gz Archive

Creating an Archive¶

• Your submission will contain two different archives: data and metadata.
• The directions below will provide some insight on how to prepare an archive on your computer.

• IMPORTANT: If you are creating your data archive on a Mac, please create a .tar.gz and not a .zip.
  We have run into some issues with decompressing large zip archives that were created using the Mac archiving software.

Using GUI-based programs¶

• There are plenty of GUI-based (graphical user interface) programs for compressing data.
• Below are two commonly used programs that will allow you to compress your data and metadata archives into their respective .zip files.
  7-Zip will also allow you to create .tar.gz files.
  • 7-Zip
  • WinRAR

Using Command Line (Terminal)¶

• You can also use the terminal to create your archives.
• First, open the terminal and navigate to the directory where your files are located.

• EXAMPLE: if my files are located in "C:/Users/John/Desktop/Submission", I would use the "cd" command to navigate there.

• In Windows, I would type:

cd C:/Users/John/Desktop/Submission

• In Unix/Linux/Mac OSX, I would type:

cd /home/myHome/myDir/DataFiles/

Creating a .zip Archive¶

• After navigating to the directory above, I would compress my files by using the "zip" command with the "-X" parameter.
  • The "-X" parameter is used to avoid saving extra file attributes.

• EXAMPLE: I am creating my data archive which consists of ten different samples, each ending in the .fq.gz file extension.
• I want to name my data archive "test_data.zip".
• In order to compress my files, I would type the following::

zip -X test_data.zip *.fq.gz

• Here, *.fq.gz means that I want to include all files in my current directory that end with .fq.gz.
• I would follow a very similar process in creating my metadata archive. There are only two differences:
  • I would choose a different file name ("test_metadata.zip").
  • I would choose a different file extension for the end of the command (*.metadata.tsv instead of *.fq.gz).

• IMPORTANT: if you have a spike-in FASTA file in your data archive, then you would type something like the following:

zip -X test_data.zip *.fq.gz mySpikeInFile.fasta

• Here, we are archiving all .fq.gz files as well as a .fasta file named "mySpikeInFile.fasta".

Creating a .tar.gz Archive¶

• The directions for creating a .tar.gz archive are very similar to the directions given above for .zip files.
• The only difference is the command you use to archive your files.
• EXAMPLE: If I wanted to archive 10 different .fq.gz files as well as a spike-in FASTA file, I would type:

tar -cvzf test_data.tar.gz *.fq.gz mySpikeInFile.fasta