Archival Snapshots of the PDB Archive:
ftp://snapshots.rcsb.org

Time-stamped yearly snapshots of the PDB archive (starting with 2004) are available via FTP at ftp://snapshots.rcsb.org. It is hoped that these snapshots will provide readily identifiable data sets for research on the PDB archive. These snapshots include the coordinate data in multiple formats and the experimental data.

The script at ftp://snapshots.rcsb.org/rsyncSnapshots.sh may be used to make a local copy of a snapshot or sections of the snapshot. The time required to download the entire archive can take quite a while (18+ hours); however, the time required to download only the coordinate data in a single format should be much less. While the time will depend on the speed of your network, our tests show that all of the coordinate files in PDB format from a snapshot can be downloaded approximately 3 hours.

The archival snapshots follow the historical directory structure--coordinate files are contained in subdirectories named after the two middle characters of the PDB ID (for example, 100d is found in the directory '00'). The date and time stamp of each file indicates the last time the file was modified.

The PDB Archive

The main PDB archive is updated weekly at ftp://ftp.wwpdb.org. Information on obtaining and maintaining copies of the entire PDB archive or certain portions of it is available from this README file in the FTP archive.

At ftp://ftp.wwpdb.org/pub/pdb/README, users will find download information for downloading from the current PDB archive:

• a single file via ftp
• the entire archive via rsync
• all files in a given format (PDB, CIF, XML) via rsync
• the entire archive via ftp
• all files in a given format (PDB, CIF, XML) via ftp using tar balls

Questions about downloading data from the archival snapshots or from the current PDB archive should be sent to info@rcsb.org.