Faulty Work Unit?

[Tomasz]

Hi, wow... I haven't posted here in a long time.
Anyway, I recently got hooked on the distributed computing, particularly folding@home.

So, there I was busy drawing on the computer with folding in the background. When all of a sudden, out comes the little window saying that the WU is completed.

So, I think to myself... amazing! Why? Because I have been running p607 for approx. 3 hours.... (this is a 7 pointer). So I connect, only to realize that it was only 25% complete

I check the log, and it says that it was a "faulty work unit." I was a little annoyed. I basically lost 3 hours, along with 25% of the WU, and had to start it back up from scratch.

So, to get to the point: How often do these faulty work units appear? Do they usually appear at a certain time during the processing of the WU? Has it happened to you? I've been running it for only a few days, so I'm not sure if this is usual.

Thanks,
Tomasz

 

[Over Achiever]

I've been running for a couple of weeks...only once has something similar happened...

My PC laptop overheated and froze the system. Froze it to the point that I had to unplug the AC and the battery and let it sit for 5 seconds until it turned off. Amazingly, nothing happened to the work unit.

Sadly, it happened again. And again. Until after two and a half weeks (well past the deadline), I made it to 92%...and the file became corrupted . I still have the WU on my computer...wonder if I should jump startt it sometime .

But this might just be a hardware problem, but I've done 5 WU on that computer now with no problems.

 

[Tomasz]

Corrupted at 92%!! That's exactly what I am worried about. I don't want to be close to finishing a work unit... and then finding out that it was useless.

Well, I guess I will just have to hope that it doesn't become faulty again.

Thanks for the response.

Tomasz

 

[bousozoku]

I've never had a faulty work unit in 10 months of folding.

I would check the hard drive to make certain it's okay. If it's an original IDE drive, it may have bad sectors and they need to be made unavailable. Try running a physical drive check, non-destructive, of course.

 

[Tomasz]

I'm pretty sure that the harddrive is all right (it is only 3-4 months old) and I have given regular maintance (defrag... ) to it so that it is quick.

I'm guessing it was just a rare problem that hopefully won't happen anymore. I opened folding when I got home today, and it is past that 25% mark... so, I'm guessing it will go through all the way this time.

Tomasz

P.S. Is folding mainly processor intensive, or do things such as the amount of ram (and speed of) also affect it?

 

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by Tomasz
I'm pretty sure that the harddrive is all right (it is only 3-4 months old) and I have given regular maintance (defrag... ) to it so that it is quick.

I'm guessing it was just a rare problem that hopefully won't happen anymore. I opened folding when I got home today, and it is past that 25% mark... so, I'm guessing it will go through all the way this time.

Tomasz

P.S. Is folding mainly processor intensive, or do things such as the amount of ram (and speed of) also affect it?

It is definitely processor intensive. The amount of RAM is always an issue. If there's not enough RAM on most systems, it will move information to the disk drive. In this case, it is also important to have a speedy drive.

I have noted that my dual 800 runs the mislabeled p145 only about 25 percent faster (43 minutes vs. 66) than my G3/400. This is in part to a healthy drive on the G3--an Ultra2 SCSI drive compared to the weak UltraATA. It's surprising that this drive was put into a flagship model. I think if I get an Ultra160 or Ultra320 drive, my folding will go 1.5 to 2 times as fast.