As recently at 2000, major astronomical surveys (SDSS, York et al. 2000) would ship harddrives daily &quot;via express courier&quot; from the scopes to the processing computers.<p>That&#x27;s the most recent I can think of. Although some surveys (2MASS) still offer data delivery &quot;on a set of DVDs&quot; if you can&#x27;t handle FTP.