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Storage

There are a number of storage options on the prince cluster, available at these paths:

  • /home/NETID or $HOME
  • /scratch/NETID or $SCRATCH
  • /beegfs/NETID or $BEEGFS
  • /archive/FIRST_LETTER_OF_NETID/NETID or $ARCHIVE

They differ on a few different factors -- storage space, number of files allowed, how long files can stay there, and ideal use.

This screenshot from the HPC wiki illustrates the differences. (Mostly, one would receive an email a week before files are deleted, but don't count on it).

![Screen Shot 2019-11-13 at 5.22.34 PM](images/Screen Shot 2019-11-13 at 5.22.34 PM.png)

An important detail not mentioned is the number of files one can store on each file system.

  • $HOME and $SCRATCH have no limit on the number of files
  • $SCRATCH allows for 1 million files
  • $BEEGFS allows for 3 million files

While this might seem like a lot, it might be a factor to consider when training on large datasets, or if one is storing multiple datasets on HPC at the same time.

Deciding what to use

*~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ The following text is borrowed from Dan Oved's workshop notes* ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

$HOME

When you first login, you are always dropped into your $HOME directory. You are limited to 20GB of storage here, but files here are permanent. This is where your code should go. To navigate here from other parts of the system:

cd $HOME

$SCRATCH

Each user gets 5TB of storage on the $SCRATCH drive. Files here are semi-permanent; files unused for 60 days are removed automatically. Use $SCRATCH for storing your data, such as images, videos, sounds, and trained models. It can be accessed by:

cd $SCRATCH

$BEEGFS

Each user gets 2TB of storage on the $BEEGFS drive. Files here are semi-permanent; files unused for 60 days are removed automatically. Use $BEEGFS for storing your data, such as images, videos, sounds, and trained models. It can be accessed by:

cd $BEEGFS

When to use $BEEGFS or $SCRATCH?

Generally speaking $BEEGFS file system is optimized for small IOs and small files, $SCRATCH is optimized for big files and big IOs.

$ARCHIVE

Each user gets 2B of storage on the $ARCHIVE drive. Files here are permanent, but cannot be accessed by any compute jobs (read XYZ file for more on this). Use this for archiving your data that you no longer need to access but don't want to have deleted.

cd $ARCHIVE

You can always view how you're doing with your quota with the command my quota

Read about transferring data next. -->