News:You may need to cleanup duplicate NCBI BLAST nt database volumes on your system

Question

[PeterC_NCBI]

If you maintain the NCBI BLAST Nucleotide Database (nt) on your file system, you may need to remove duplicate volumes the next time you update it .

The nt database will soon be more than 100 volumes, and we'll move from two to three digit volume numbers (e.g., nt.00.tar.gz -> nt.000.tar.gz). The previous two digit volumes will remain on your system if you don't take steps to remove them.

You can use the script cleanup-blastdb-volumes.py that is included in the BLAST+ release to conveniently remove any duplicate volumes.

See the BLAST Command Line Applications User Manual for more details.

You can download BLAST databases and the BLAST+ release from the NCBI BLAST FTP area.

[Mensur Dlakic]

Any reason not to go to 4-digit volume numbers so you don't have to deal with this issue again in our lifetimes?

[PeterC_NCBI]

Good point. I'll pass this idea along to the development team.

[PeterC_NCBI]

Thanks @mensur.Your idea may be a while in implementation since it would require code changes. The current code already accommodates three digit volumes. It automatically switches over when the number of volumes is above 100, There are currently 110 volumes for nt on the ftp site.