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Tips for Reducing Your Disk Usage

Please see the information at the below link first, under “Allocated Disk Quota”

Allocated Disk Quota

Remove unnecessary files (WARNING: You must not delete .login, .cshrc, or .logout):

  • You can regularly delete the “Applications Data” directory from your Z Drive. Make sure there are no other programs running or this deletion will cause an error.  Empty your Recycle Bin, logout and log back in again, which will force the re-creation of this necessary TEMP directory.
  • To delete on the servers, do ‘rm filename’ or ‘rm -r dir_name’.
  • To delete in Windows, right click a file or directory in Windows Explorer with the mouse and left click delete.  Once done, make sure you empty the Recycle Bin, or the files will remain on your drive.
  • Delete compiled programs that aren’t currently being use and recompile them when needed.
  • More info about Disk Quota can be be found at: https://www.seasnet.ucla.edu/seasnet-account-quotas
Example: debug folder created by Visual Studio
  • After creating an executable, delete the unnecessary *.o files.
  • Delete core files left by programs that failed.

Transfer your files to your own computer:

  • From Windows burn a CD or use a USB key drive to transfer files.
  • For larger files, use an SFTP (secure file transfer protocol) program from your personal machine to connect to the SEASnet server and copy your data from the server to your personal machine.

Compress less utilized text files/programs:

Zip files are compatible with most operating systems, so a file zipped on the servers can be unzipped on a PC.

  • Use ‘zip’ to compress files and save space (about 50%).
  • Type ‘zip’ for additional information.

Server Example: zip large_file.zip large_filename

  • zip -r last_quarter.zip last_quarter_directory
  • Use ‘unzip’ to uncompress files and restore files/directories.
  • Type ‘zip’ for additional information.

Strip your executables:

  • Use the ‘strip’ program to reduce the amount of space the executable takes.
  • Strip gets rid of all the symbolic information which is useful for debugging but not normally necessary.
  • Use the command ‘strip file’.

Dump your core files:

If you run UNIX applications, core files may be dumped to your account.  These files can be extremely large.  Generally they are dumped to your home directory and are named ‘core’.

  • Use ‘cd’ without an argument to change to your home directory.
  • Use ‘ls -l’ to list all files in your home directory along with the file sizes.
  • Use ‘rm filename’ to remove each file you no longer need.
  • Common UNIX directories can be ./gconf, ./gnome2, ./evolution, ./thumbnails, ./eclipse,2./trash
  • Empty the Trash when completed.