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Storage and Scratch

Home Directory

Every user has a personal home directory at /home/your_username. This is your default working directory when you log in.

  • Backed up via Legato — see TAU backup info
  • For purchasing additional storage, see storage pricing
  • NetApp storage includes snapshots for file recovery

Scratch Partitions

Scratch partitions are shared, high-speed temporary storage available across the cluster:

  • /scratch100
  • /scratch200
  • /scratch300

Use scratch for intermediate files during a job run — not for long-term storage.

Local Scratch

Some compute nodes and workstations have a local /localscratch partition. This is node-local storage — faster than shared scratch but only accessible from that specific node.

If your job uses /localscratch, you must clean up after yourself. Add this to your job script:

export CACHEDIR=/localscratch/${USER}_${SLURM_JOB_ID}
mkdir -p $CACHEDIR

cleanup() {
  rm -rf -- "$CACHEDIR" || true
}
trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM HUP

Important

  • Scratch is not backed up — do not store anything you cannot afford to lose
  • Clean up scratch files after your job completes
  • Do not use scratch as a permanent storage location
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