Offline Data Handling in the NA48 Experiment

The NA48 experiment at CERN has collected for 8 years an amount of data larger than 100 TB/year. The CASTOR storage management system has been used for all kinds of data. Simple and robust mechanisms were implemented to handle the data starting from the online Level-3 trigger system up to the Central Data Recording and the final analysis. To enable data analysis at remote institutes, suitable procedures were prepared to export data, using tapes at first and then directly on the network. The architecture of the NA48 data handling system will be described as well as the performance figures.