Work library

[BaileyY]

Hi. 

I am working on pc laptop with the latest SAS Base installed.  I have had errors and storage issues running large temporary work data being stored in my laptops 'c' drive.  I've written code to delete any temporary tables as I work along by inserting

'proc datasets lib=work kill nolist memtype=data;  quit;'  anywhere I can.  But my jobs are failing due to storage.  I believe there is code where I can direct the processing of my data on an external drive (with more storage) to continue on my work?  Does anyone know the code for this?   I would like this code embedded into the software so I do not have to run any macros each time I load up SAS.  Can anyone help me?  Thank you in advance

[Kurt_Bremser]

Make a copy of the configuration file used for your SAS session (with just Base installed, this should be sasv9.cfg in Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.4), and modify the -WORK directive. Then change your desktop link to use that configuration file.

[Reeza]

Storage or RAM?
What types of PROCS are you running? If it's Sorts, merges and such it's likely a storage issues. If it's regression or optimization, it's likely a RAM issue.

A common workaround for this is to assign a library with the name USER at the beginning of processes you know are large and need to be redirected. Then all files will go to that folder. You will want to introduce some more data management by dropping intermediary data sets if needed.

[SASKiwi]

If SAS crashes then you may be left with SAS WORK folders on your C drive that can't be cleaned up by PROC DATASETS. In Windows Explorer navigate to your SAS WORK folder, normally called SASWORK and delete any old folders named _TDnnnn_xxxxxxxx. 

[Astounding]

One additional item to consider...

Are you compressing your data? Better when you have many character variables:

options compress=yes;

Better when you have many numeric variables:

options compress=binary;

[ChrisNZ]

1.Even (much) better is to use SPDE tables with binary compression.

libname W spde "%sysfunc(pathname(WORK))" compress=binary partsize=1t;

Data sets are typically shrunk by at least 80%.

2. Also consider splitting the paths for the WORK library and for the utility files onto separate disks, using option UTILLOC.