Folding Forum

I'm aware that storage space/storage read/write speed isn't really much of a bottleneck for the f@h software. But how far can I push this? If I were putting together a dedicated folding rig, and all my budget was going into GPUs or a decent CPU (probably more GPU) how low can I go on storage space? Specifically regarding cheapo 32 gb SSDs, would there be anything that f@h does that would cause a tiny drive like that to over fill? As far as I know, the only thing f@h does with the drive while it is working is save backups of the current work unit.

Since the machine will only ever run f@h, all I ever need the drive to do is hold the os (Ubuntu), and f@h's data

In my experience, the files associated with the WUs are quite small for today's standards, that is a few dozen MB at the most.
You can have several of them on disk, though, but hardly more than a few. It can swell to a dozen or two if the servers are badly overloaded. So I'd say 200-300 MB should be enough.

I don't think it will overfill.
I have one gpu and 2 cpu slots running right now, and the work folder is 280 MB only.

Other parts of the system:
I have a Linux mint on a spare SSD, not much stuff installed. (but I installed BOINC and rosetta@home too, but that does not run right now)
so on my 240GB SSD,
-1GB for boot,
-33 GB for swap (the installer suggested that, but it's rarely used as i have lot of ram. but you will need a few GB of swap minimum)
-206GB partition for filesystem, of which 188 GB free according to one program displaying partitions, (but only 177 gb free according to file browser, I guess due to file system overhead)
(of which 1.5 GB documents and installers, not necessary for a folding rig, plug in a pendrive for that if you need that).
So the system uses ~16.5 GB now at most.
the "disk usage analyzer" says only 12.3 GB used including my documents, (but it gave a warning, that it could not analyze all folders)
(it's a full install of linux mint including a lot of stuff, like media players, browser, email, libreoffice, many GB maybe)

So, in overall, you might be able to go with some cheap 32 GB ssd if you want to. (1GB boot, 1 GB swap, and 30 GB for the system should be okay)
Maybe, by uninstalling a lot of unused stuff, or doing some sort of minimal installation...
(many distros have a lot of suff that won't be used if you are just folding on the machine)

I just looked up, the Ubuntu distro has a minimal installer:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/02/ubu ... all-option

It removes around 80 packages (and related cruft) from the default install, including:

Thunderbird
Transmission
Rhythmbox
LibreOffice (including language pack)
Cheese
Shotwell
‘Example Content’

Okay, so, more details:
sometimes packages are upgraded, system is being used etc, and things may need to be cleaned:
https://itsfoss.com/free-up-space-ubuntu-linux/

I have a dedicated Linux Mint folding rig that uses 10GB of disk space for the whole thing.

ajm wrote:In my experience, the files associated with the WUs are quite small for today's standards, that is a few dozen MB at the most.

Biggest WU I've personally seen is around 160MB

I'm seeing 120GB SSDs for pretty much the same price as 32GB ones (but it might be our components market here in the UK) … So if you have any doubts it might just be easier to grab a 120GB ??