Downloading AABC Release 2 Structural Preprocessed data to an HPC cluster

[Margo Bellanger]

Dear support team, 

I would like to download the Structural Preprocessed data from the Aging Adult Brain Connectome (AABC) Release 2. Currently, downloading the data though IBM Aspera Connect on my local laptop is quite slow due to tha dataset size. 

I was wondering whether it is possible to download teh data directly to a high-performance computing cluster using a command-line tool such as curl. 

I came across the documentation on accessing resources via the REST interface: this: https://wiki.humanconnectome.org/docs/Accessing%20ConnectomeDB%20Resource%20Data%20without%20Aspera%20(REST).html. However, this documentation appears to apply to the older ConnectomeDB systems rather than the current BALSA platform. 

Could you please advice whether there is a recommended way to download the data directly to an HPC environment? 

Kind regards, 

Margo Bellanger

[Elam, Jennifer]

Hi Margo,

The supported download method is through Aspera Connect and the browser plugin, specifically because it is faster than a browser download.  The intention is for users to mount their network storage on a machine that can run a browser with Aspera Connect and the plugin.

While our older version of the Aspera server doesn't easily interact with command-line tools, a user has posted a somewhat involved method to use ascp with it:

https://groups.google.com/a/humanconnectome.org/g/hcp-users/c/wiEDvYl1bwQ/m/4nxd-i1MAAAJ

The data are only available in the large packages via Aspera right now. We do have plans to implement a REST interface for downloading individual files and an alternative to Aspera for larger transfers. These are not yet in place, but we are hoping to have them later this spring. 

Have you tried downloading the data for only one or a subset of subjects? 

In the BALSA UI, you can filter for a subset of subjects using the Save Custom Subject Group button that will apply to both the non-imaging and imaging data packages that you can queue for download. Applying a filter would decrease the size of the downloads and perhaps give you an option for managing/transferring smaller chunks of the data to the desired destination.

We are working on a plan for implementing alternatives to the Aspera GUI in the future, but they are not yet in place. One of these alternatives will be a REST interface which will be useful for downloading individual files, but will be slow for larger downloads. We are also in the planning stage for a longer term file transfer solution such as Globus.

Best,

Jenn 

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From: Margo Bellanger <margo...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2026 2:20 AM
To: HCP-Users <hcp-...@humanconnectome.org>
Subject: [hcp-users] Downloading AABC Release 2 Structural Preprocessed data to an HPC cluster

 

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