1. The UniProt (=SwissProt+Trembl) monthly updated protein info database. We put these datafiles into a database. Uniprot.org also makes available this data in XML form (same URL as below) but I find those too large to download/handle/process. The (smaller) .dat files are regular text files: 

   size     URL   maxsize   OS    fs    description   length     format
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Swiss-Prot  (1)    2.4 GB   linux  ext3  protein info  variable  free text (multiline)
Trembl      (2)   47.5 GB   linux  ext3  protein info  variable  free text (multiline)


  (1): Swiss-Prot (curated data): uniprot_sprot.dat
  (2): Trembl (uncurated data): uniprot_trembl.dat

Uniprot grows pretty fast too: see the graphs on the SwissProt and TrEMBL stats pages.

2. Sometimes it's necessary to munge a database dump (in text form). They can be 100s of GB.

3. Semi-continuously processed data-files vary from tiny to 1 GB (xml+csv, linux).

In reply to Re: Biggest file? by erix
in thread Biggest file? by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.