Disk Usage

The Group's shared disk space is divided into three areas - home directories (/home), projects space (/Projects), and scratch space (/Scr).

• /home

  Every user has a home directory, for the storage of personal data and files. Users should store text files, email spools, papers, pictures, web pages, and other such data here. As a courtesy to other users, please keep your disk usage below five gigabytes (5000 megabytes); while we do not currently enforce quotas on this space, you will get periodic requests to trim your files down to this limit. Do not store large data sets in /Home .

  Incremental backups of these files are made nightly.

• /Projects

  Projects space is for mass storage of research or administrative projects. Space is assigned to a specific user, on request and as needed, and should always be controlled by a current group member. This is where all large datasets should be stored. Note that once these files are no longer in use, they should be archived and removed to save on disk space. As a courtesy to other users, please keep your disk usage below fifty gigabytes (51200 megabytes); while we do not currently enforce quotas on this space, you will get periodic requests to trim your files down to this limit.

  • All Projects spaces must be maintained by a current Resource member.
  • As disk space is limited resource, Projects spaces should only hold data which is currently being used. Older files should be archived to CD/DVD and loaded when needed.
  • Please inform the sysadmin team when you anticipate a substantial increase in disk usage, to allow for necessary planning to handle the increased disk and backup load.

  Incremental backups of these files are made nightly.

• /Scr

  There are three categories of /Scr space:

  • Short-term - files in these /Scr spaces are automatically deleted after not being modified for a certain length of time, as indicated by the name of the space (ie, in /Scr/7day-1 files are deleted after seven days). This space is for short-term storage of files, such as to analyze a data file generated and stored at NCSA or PSC.
    In order to better manage this space, the sysadmin team reserves the right to monitor this space for trends regarding file modification times and usage.
  • Long-term - files in these directories are saved until the space is needed. This is useful for storing files that can be recovered from CD/DVD if necessary, or for output files for local compute runs. Files may be deleted from these spaces without notice if the space is needed for other projects.
  • Temporary - these /Scr spaces are allocated through the queueing system for one-week periods. This ensures that disk space is normally available to download archived data for analysis. To allocate a temporary scratch partition, run the command echo | qsub -l arch=scratch. You will receive an email with instructions when your job starts running and daily until you delete the allocated directory. Please limit yourself to one temporary scratch space at a time and delete your directory promptly when you are done using it.

  Note that files in /Scr are not backed up. Whether you accidently delete your files or the disk fails, if there is a problem there is no way to get the files back. Never put anything into /Scr that you can't afford to lose.

Files outside of these areas are subject to removal by the system administrators without notice. Note that this applies to group workstations and laptops.

Backups

Backups of /home and /Projects spaces are performed nightly. Details are here.