I recently installed boinc (5.2.13) + cpdn and i calculated 80 hours (cpu time). I estimated my wu is going to be finished at late spring 2006.
But just my Windows crashed and rebooted and unfortunately appearently some files from the cpnd project are destroyed. After the reboot Boinc realized that and ... fetch another wu, where i have to go from start again!!! (look at http://www.kryptonetz.de/temp/cpdn.jpg)
Hey guys, i can\'t complete a wu in this way (Windows will definitely crash sometimes). And as i read somewhere, i must finish a whole wu to make scientific use of the result, makes it sense to continue the calculations?
(Running boinc all the time is not only \"just for fun\" for me, i\'m interested in supporting scientists.)
Or maybe the partial results of my last wu have been transfered to climateprediction.net and i could somehow continue that?
Should i make regular backups from the cpnd project files from time to time? How do i recover?
If i reinstall my entire Windows, is it enough simply to move the boinc/cpnd files from a backup to the new os?
How much space will be allocated by a complete cpnd project?

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Steffen

All I can say is if your windows crashs then you have serious problems and it is not windows, I have been running my box with XP for 2 years now and have never had a crash......

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BOINC Wiki

To make a backup, you need to exit BOINC first, as there are locked files, and also, since it takes a while to do, the various data files will get out of sync if BOINC is still running.
If you are having problems with crashes, It is best if you Suspend BOINC first, wait until it says the projects ARE suspended, and THEN exit.
To restore after a failure, just delete the entire BOINC folder, and then copy the backup to this same spot.

If you are running multiple projects, then it gets complicated.
The proceedure is documented in the BOINC Wiki, <a href=\"http://boinc-doc.net/boinc-wiki/index.php?title=Backup_BOINC\"> here.</a>

Lots of people complete the long models. And lots of people have problems.
It depends on how stable the computer is. For cpdn, with it\'s intense, continuous maths calcs which heat up the cpu, a computer needs to be VERY stable.

Steffen
I just realised that I didn\'t answer all of your questions.

For a sulphur model, you\'ll need 3Gigs to be safe, although the files get compressed at the end.

The small amount of processing that you did on the model is of no use, as you didn\'t get far enough.

Sulphur models take in excess of a thousand cpu hours to complete.

Moving a copy of the entire BOINC folder to a new os will depend on the os. You can\'t transfer between Windows and Linux, for example. But you should be able to do so between your present version and Win XP.
BUT! Make sure that if you copy to a cd/dvd, that you remove the read only flag from all the files, after you copy them back!