I run BOINC on a computer that has 100GB hard drive. I use it for other applications as well and I'm getting to the point where space is becoming an issue. The culprit seems to be ClimatePrediction.net. At any given time, it takes up 30-32GB of space despite the fact that in "Computing Preferences" I set it to "No more than 25GB" and "leave at least 2GB of disk space". I currently have <1GB of free disk space.

I've tried freeing up disk space by getting rid of unwanted files/programs, but Climate Prediction just seems to keep gobbling up the freed space. I don't want to stop participating, but I'm not going out and buying a bigger hard drive either. Any suggestions?

This has been a problem with CPDN for a long time. Just about any model type that fails is likely to leave the files from the crashed model behind. Since CPDN models are so large to begin with (about 332Mb) and grow as they run, each can leave behind about 1Gb of files. The hadcm3s tasks are worse. Even when they complete successfully the often don�t clean up after themselves.

---

The usual advice is to:

1. Set "no new tasks" for CPDN in the projects tab in BOINC Manager and wait until all your CPDN models have finished and reported.

2. Then do a "reset project" for CPDN in the projects tab in BOINC Manager to clear old files.

3. If that doesn't clear everything then do a "remove" for CPDN in the projects tab in BOINC Manager and then re-attach to the project.

That should clear out all the old stuff, though it may start to accumulate again, for the reasons JIM mentions.

Does doing that reset the credit you've earned?

No, credit on CPDN is awarded based on "trickles" received. Once they've been received by the project servers then nothing that happens on your machine will take those credits away. However, you should finish any models that are running, otherwise those models will vanish, though any credits already awarded for those models will stay awarded.

No, credit on CPDN is awarded based on "trickles" received. Once they've been received by the project servers then nothing that happens on your machine will take those credits away. However, you should finish any models that are running, otherwise those models will vanish, though any credits already awarded for those models will stay awarded.

Right. Exactly. Even the fattest models I've run (and I've run a lot) take no more than about 2GB -- if your BOINC folder is bigger than 2GBx(cores running), set "no new tasks" wait, reset, reattach. Or delete old model folders as posted elsehwere.
There's more tech ways, but that's the fastest, and cleanest way.
And, no, credits earned are earned and never go away.

---

If you go to the folder where BOINC is installed, you can then go into projects and then climateprediction.net you can safely delete all folders belonging to tasks that do not appear on the tasks tab in BOINC Manager.

You may already have done this but it is also worth ensuring that leave tasks in memory while suspended is ticked under computing preferences and that all of the BOINC data and program folders are excluded from any anti-virus scans. This will help to minimise the number of models that crash. It won't stop them as some models are designed to fail through producing an impossible climate etc. From time to time there are also batches where a significant numer crash for other reasons.

Thank you everyone for your help. The current tasks underway would require waiting at least a week to complete so I took Dave's advise and just did a manual delete of old files. Just being conservative and deleting anything older than 6 months still freed up 20GB of space, but that'll help a lot!

Thanks again!