OK, so my job involves running computer programs that a) generate output files that are not small- rarely less than 500MB, frequently multiple GBs and b) require a LOT of swap/scratch space for the temporary files needed while performing the calculations. The laptops pretty much all of us are issued these days come with 500GB drives- I have MicroSD cards that size lying around. After complaining about this on every program I've worked and wasting (collectively) days worth of time having to compress/sort through/shuffle around files to have room to run things, we finally have approval to get a 2nd, larger drive sent out to us. But now they're dragging their feet in actually sending it out- so I'm once again effectively wasting time trying to free up the space I need to do actual work.
In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :
Stop.
Tell them you can't do your job without the proper tools.
A 1T external drive is under $100. A 1T SSD for a laptop is under $60.
If they won't spend that, find a better company to work for.
wae
UltimaDork
3/19/25 3:15 p.m.
I've been clearing the hill in our back yard of all the invasive honeysuckle that we've been neglecting for the last 15 years or so. I've got almost all of it cut down and I've gone through three tanks of gas in the wood chipper and have turned most of it into mulch. There isn't a muscle or joint on my body that isn't aching. I just remembered last night that when I installed the fence, I set it back 6' from the property line in order to keep the dogs out of the drainage culvert so I've got more honeysuckle to cut down and shred once I'm finished with all the stuff on this side of the fence.
All of this could have been avoided if I just went out there once or twice a month with a little hand clipper and snipped off any new growth as it came up. But do you think I'm going to learn that lesson? Of course I won't.
Ashyukun (Robert) said:
OK, so my job involves running computer programs that a) generate output files that are not small- rarely less than 500MB, frequently multiple GBs and b) require a LOT of swap/scratch space for the temporary files needed while performing the calculations. The laptops pretty much all of us are issued these days come with 500GB drives- I have MicroSD cards that size lying around. After complaining about this on every program I've worked and wasting (collectively) days worth of time having to compress/sort through/shuffle around files to have room to run things, we finally have approval to get a 2nd, larger drive sent out to us. But now they're dragging their feet in actually sending it out- so I'm once again effectively wasting time trying to free up the space I need to do actual work.
Space is so cheap right now have them build a offline box and dump it to that. I have the same issues but our daily data generated is 50tB. I built a small 100tb raid 5 box to host the data while it was pushed to the cloud.
In reply to Toyman! :
Right now I'm just waiting for them to ship out the 2TB SSD for my laptop (our computers are locked down so we can't use external drives, but apparently we can install the 2nd internal drive ourselves and the encrypted bios will take care of it). It's not as much of an issue for the majority of people who are at least a few times a week in a facility hooked in to the company network and can back things up to network shares, but I'm completely remote and doing so takes a lot longer.
I'm also supposed to be able to remotely access a higher-capacity analysis box back at the plant and send analysis jobs to run there... but for some reason when I connect using the VM client I don't see the Tier 2 box on the systems I can access. I'm curious which is going to happen first, getting the new internal drive or the help desk figuring out why I can't access the remote analysis machine.
