How many nr file in NCBI nr database

Question

[Kash]

Hi everyone,

I am downloading NCBI nr database using following command, wget ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/nr.*.tar.gz

How do I know how many nr files to expect. I have only 38 gzipped tar files. And the dowloading process seems to have stopped.

Answer 1

[lieven.sterck]

38 files sounds about right.

You can visit that ftp site (ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/) and have a look in the folder how many files there are for nr (38 thus) . You need to get the .md5 files as well though as you need those to check if the download was complete and correct.

[Kash]

Thank you very much. Last year there were 100+ files downloaded for nr database. That's why i was concerned. This means they keep updating the ne database.

[GenoMax]

BLAST databases moved to a new format (v.5) as of February 2020. Since that time the number of files has gone down but their size has gone up significantly.