Fast download BLAST databases from NCBI.

sequenceserver
#1

Hi,

I recently wrote ncbi-blast-dbs gem (https://github.com/yeban/ncbi-blast-dbs) as a faster alternative to update_blastdb.pl.

It downloads database volumes in parallel on a multi-core machine, verifies md5 and extracts the volumes. The volumes are updated if a newer version is available on the server, or re-downloaded if corrupt. Aborted downloads are safely resumed.

Needs wget and md5sum, which are easily available on Linux and Mac.

To use:

sudo gem install ncbi-blast-dbs
cd /my/blast/database/directory
ncbi-blast-dbs nt nr

— Priyam

#2

I can attest to the utility of this app - easy and painless install and operation - much faster and more reliable, IMHO, than NCBI’s perl script.

:slight_smile: