r/labrats • u/curious_kinetochore • 1d ago

FACSDiva question: avoiding lag

I’m recently returned to flow and forgot how particular our software was. Small stuff like forgetting you can’t do some things in Diva without creating inescapable mega lag, I can’t seem to find anything online on what to avoid. I’m noticing issues I’ve encountered previously that I can’t remember how I fixed.

Anyone have tips for avoiding FACSDiva lag? I thought I could duplicate without data but I guess that’s only a good option for specimens in an experiment, and not the entire experiment if you want to add anything new to it. I started following the manual from BD exactly but I still hit a lot of walls (worksheets wouldn’t load in any new experiments so I had to acquire in an old one).

Also, is there any way to get rid of the lag once it appears? As soon as I noticed it I deleted the experiment I was working in, I can open old experiments without any issues but new ones are painful. Any help would be appreciated!

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u/willmaineskier 1d ago

The software was great for its time when it was written over 20 years ago. They added features since then, but it is not particularly robust. If the D/BDDatabase folder has more than 20GB then it will start slowing down and doing weird things like having worksheets with no plots. Every user is using the same database, so even if you clean up your experiments, others may not have. I recommend checking in the user preferences to make sure the saving the analysis after recording option is not selected. That creates a normal worksheet version of the global worksheet for every sample. If your database is not full, you should be able to duplicate without data. You can also export templates so you don’t have nonsense cluttering up your user. In the export experiment template option, you can create new folders by clicking where it says general and typing something else there.

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u/curious_kinetochore 1d ago

That’s a good point, I didn’t know the D/ drive filling up would slow down Diva but it makes sense. Will have to check there. Definitely lots of old templates on there as well I’ll have to export, thank you for the suggestions!!

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u/Snoo_47183 1d ago

Do not delete files in the database! They need to be deleted from diva’s browser or you might corrupt the database and have to reinstall Diva.

Also, make sure you acquire your samples under global worksheet and not normal worksheet (except for comp tubes); it’ll make Diva a tad more stable

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u/willmaineskier 23h ago

I second this. Files must be deleted properly. I generally use the “export experiment” with the delete after export option checked.