Hey, I'm a bit new to this so bear with me. I'm at college and constantly connected to the internet so I just run my cpu (quad core q6600) at 90% whenever I'm not around, and just suspend work if I need to do something else cpu intensive. My question is, what exactly is hard drive space required for? I set my limit to 50gb of my 640gb hard drive but I don't understand why you might need so much dedicated hard drive space? Could someone explain what exactly is occupying the space? Thank you.

All the workunits for a given project along with the required science application executable and any helper objects (.DLL files) required for computation.

The hard drive setting simply puts a limit on how much space you're willing to dedicate to the aforementioned files, but doesn't necessarily indicate how much space will actually be used. Actual space will vary depending on your WU cache settings (to cache workunits to your local hard drive) and which projects you belong to.


As a side note, have you tried letting SETI run at 100% even while you're using your computer? The science application is launched at the lowest priority supported by the Operating System so that anything the user does on the computer will take precedence over the science app automatically (this is dynamically handled by Windows based upon priority setting). For instance, I have a dual Xeon 5130 (two quad core CPUs) and I do intense video work, listen to MP3s and encode video files into DVD format all without any slow down while using my system. You can't even tell SETI is running in the background because whatever I do takes precedence over SETI, and whatever I'm not using of my CPU is automatically allocated back to SETI, dynamically.

So the space being use isn't going to be used permanently just until the associated tasks are finished? And it's not cpu speed I'm concerned with. Any work I do works at optimal speed even when running seti @ 100%.. it's just that I'm overclocked from 2.4 to 3.43ghz and generate about 65C of heat on my hottest core and by running it at 90% I stay around 58C on my hottest core and 47C on my coolest, but I might just change it to let it run at 100C anyway. 65 is hot, but not dangerous. Right now I'm just trying to get my second computer to work on the same account as my main one.

Edit: Both computers are working fine on the same account =)

Also, I switched to 100% of cpu usage and I'm only at ~49-58C on either of the 4 cores. Maybe my room is just colder today lol.

Actually... I think the other computer is working. It says Suspended - User Account Active but the project is at 2.xxx% hmm.. I'll check back in a few hours and see how that's doing.

You can see how much hard drive space BOINC is using by going to the Disk tab in the BOINC manager. The left-hand pie chart will tell you how much BOINC is using total, and the right pie chart will tell you how much each BOINC project is using.

I have mine set to 9GB maximum, and BOINC averages around 65MB with a two-day work buffer on my quad-core AMD machine. If you have a smaller work buffer, it won't use as much ... and if you set it to 10 days (the maximum), hard drive usage will go higher. Even then, a gigabyte or two is plenty.

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Cruiser
Gateway GT5692 L-f-S Edition
-Phenom X4 9650 CPU
-4GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM
-500GB SATA HD
-Vista x64 SP1
-BOINC 6.2.19 32-bit client
-SSE3 optimized 32-bit apps

So the space being use isn't going to be used permanently just until the associated tasks are finished?

More or less. The hard drive space is just used as a temporary cache for workunits. SETI@Home MultiBeam workunits are roughly 375,330 bytes (366KB), so they're not very big at all. SETI's AstroPulse workunits are approximately 8MB, not very big either but they can add up if you have a lot of them. Other BOINC project's task files will have differing sizes.

The only files that stay on your computer are the science application and any helper files that are required to actually process the work. SETI@Home's application is about 1.5MB - 2MB in size. AstroPulse is about half a MegaByte or so.

The drive setting simply ensures that your cache doesn't swallow up your entire hard drive, which some project's task files can do because they are huge in size.

And it's not cpu speed I'm concerned with. Any work I do works at optimal speed even when running seti @ 100%.. it's just that I'm overclocked from 2.4 to 3.43ghz and generate about 65C of heat on my hottest core and by running it at 90% I stay around 58C on my hottest core and 47C on my coolest, but I might just change it to let it run at 100C anyway. 65 is hot, but not dangerous.

I don't think you have much to worry about. There's a avid user base of SETI@Home users over in the Number Crunching forum that are very dedicated to squeezing out every ounce of power out of their system by overclocking (and buying the best cooling to go along with that). Many of them are running Core 2 Quads overclocked by at least 1GHz or better, and they run SETI just fine. The important thing to remember is that if you overclock too much and your system becomes unstable, simply back off your OC just a tad until your system is stable again and you'll do fine. For more tips, visit the Number Crunching forum.

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