Hello, I've been a member for a few years now and I recently noticed BOINC has assigned around 16GB disk usage to climate prediction (as opposed to 15MB it assigns to SETI).

When I look at c:\programdata\boinc\projects\climateprediction.net I see some large folders containing files that haven't been updated since last year, e.g.:
hadcm3n_n6d1_1880_40_008408869 (3.5GB)

is it OK to delete these? I wonder if they're left behind from a PC crash or something?

thanks
David

Long Answer
When tasks crash they sometimes leave behind the folders with the model in. The folders for tasks not shown in the tasks tab in BOINC Manager can be deleted. When checking make sure you have the, "Show all tasks" view and not the "Show active tasks" one as otherwise you may end up deleting tasks waiting to run.

Short Answer
Yes!

understood, thank you!

Time to get the little net and scoop the dead fish out of your aquarium.

Seriously, if anyone has noticed that there backups are bigger than they used to be or the amount of space being used by CPDN is growing then it might be a good time to check for old files from crashed WU�s that did not clean up after themselves.

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This thread reminded me to check and sure enough there was one to clear out.

The simplest and safest would be to detach and reattach (or as they say in newer BOINC versions remove and add) the project. That gets BOINC to delete the project folder and anything under it as well as clearing out the client_state entries. The drawbacks are that you have to finish off any work in progress and it will want to download the executables again.

The same applies to other projects such as Einstein which can leave data files around in case they'll be needed later.

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BOINC blog

The drawbacks are that you have to finish off any work in progress and it will want to download the executables again.

And you lose any work in the queue and given this projects famine or glut status with regards to work, if I have two tasks in progress and two queued, then I would rather try and minimise the risk of running out of work. It isn't too hard to check folder names against task names.

Hello, ditto to longtime member, never took out the trash!

This worked wonders on my 13.2 GB project file. Now I'm wondering about the dodgy .zip and .gz files that continue to lurk. Can I use the same rule of thumb on them, or do they serve some current purpose?

That depends on where the files are.
If they're in the main climateprediction.net folder, then they may be common files used by several types of model.

If you want to get rid of unneeded files there, set the project to No new tasks, wait until what you have running has finished and reported, and then do a project Reset. This will delete all of the project files, and the next time that you ask for work, files that are relevant to current models will be downloaded.

To expand on what Les has said, I recently deleted the folders for crashed tasks and gained about 4GB of space. At the moment with two tasks in progress, none in queue, BOINC is using about 2234MB with 1859MB of that being in the CPDN project folder. Just over 290MB is in the currently inactive WCG folder. This leaves less than 100MB being used by BOINC between the programme and files needed and any extraneous ones that are there.

If I remember, I might consider doing a project reset next time there is no work available but for a maximum of a few tens of megabytes it is not a priority.