disk space needed for Einstein
19 Jan 2015 17:03:51 UTC
Topic 197934
(moderation:
I was looking at the disk space consumption for Boinc and noticed that it was nearly 4GB for Einstein folder. My setting is 5GB in the Boinc preferences. I run SETI and GPUGRID also. None of them use as much space. When I was looking at the file dates in the folder, the Einstein files date all the way back to November when I started.
My question is now what is the purpose of all those older files? Which ones can be deleted? Boinc is running on my SSD boot drive and there is not that much space left.
disk space needed for Einstein
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The different Einstein applications vary quite a bit in how many bytes of application and data must be downloaded just to run a first task, how many bytes for a typical incremental task, and how much download economy is earned by not re-downloading needed files already on disk.
Yes, the totals can be rather startling--I've seen beyond 10 Gbytes, though on my primary cruncher today it is just 1.05 Gbytes. As most users place these files on physical hard drives on which the value of 10 Gbytes of storage is well under US $1, and on which they have much spare space, for most of us this is not any issue.
Your case appears to differ.
1. Could you consider relocating the BOINC data directory to a non-SSD hard drive? You are given the option of choosing a non-default directory at BOINC install time. Moving an existing installation is not difficult.
2. if not, you may wish to use einstein preferences to avoid having the more disk storage intensive Einstein applications sent to you.
But, saving somewhat uncommon abnormal situations, the scheme looks after itself. If you delete files, you are likely to incur extra network transmission cost to the project and yourself.
By the way, the system on which I type this note has an 80 Gbyte SSD boot drive, which, thanks to Windows and other offenders, tends to run fuller than I like. My boinc data directory has not been on the boot drive on this machine for some years.
It would be helpful to have
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It would be helpful to have an idea what the files are and how big you have set your Einstein cache.
Some files may appear 'old' but are required for your currently running tasks and then should be automatically deleted when no longer needed...
RE: My question is now what
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If they're data files then I'd bet the names start with H1* or L1*, that indicates they belong to the Gravity Wave search. That search works by downloading a big set of data files that can be reused for multiple tasks, each subsequent task only downloads some configuration data on how to search through the data files and once in a while a few extra data files. These files remain on disk until there are no more task that can use them and then the server will tell Boinc to delete them.
The other searches uses new data for each task with the exception of the application files and maybe a few others but they should not consume much space.
As to deleting files: Any file manually deleted will promptly be downloaded by Boinc again. So there's no use trying that.
If you really want to free up some disk space then set Einstein@home to "No new tasks", complete all tasks and report them. Then detach/remove the project and then attach/add it back. This procedure should clear out all project files and start new again. But as archae86 said it would probably lead to you downloading a new big data set wasting bandwidth for both you and the project and with time the space consumed will again approach the current value.
Looks like i will just leave
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Looks like i will just leave them. I have 4 computers running Einstein, and the cache varies from 1.89GB to 2.27GB. Either I misread the 4GB size or the files were cleaned up by themselves. 2.3GB is no big deal on an 500GB SSD. It is just so much more than what I am used to for SETI.