Data Migration and /project File System Decommission

Posted on August 21, 2025 by Dani Cannella

1 Migrate data from /project to /project2 by November 1, 2025.

The /project file system will be decommissioned at the end of this year (December 2025). To simplify the transition and avoid billing complications, no storage charges will be applied for either /project or /project2 allocations through December 31, 2025.

Key Information:

  • All data must be transferred from /project to /project2 by November 1, 2025. Data remaining on /project after this date will be read-only. Any data remaining on /project on January 1, 2026 will be permanently lost.
  • You will receive a prorated invoice for FY26 for /project2 storage in the coming weeks. Bills will be prorated from January 1, 2026 to June 30, 2026.
  • The storage rate for /project2 is $60/TB/year, an increase from the previous $40/TB/year for /project.

Please note that /project2 uses a different compression method than /project, which may result in larger dataset sizes after migration. To make the transition easier, prorated charges for the current fiscal year will be based on the size of your existing /project allocation. However, this change in compression, in combination with the increased storage rate, will likely lead to higher storage costs in FY27 (July 1, 2026 – June 30, 2027).

To help manage storage needs and reduce costs, we strongly encourage you to archive data that is not actively in use. The CARC Cold Storage System offers the first 5 TB of archive storage across all your projects at no cost.

For more information on the /project2 file system and the CARC Cold Storage System, see our Storage File Systems user guide.

The CARC team is here to assist you with migrating your data, including providing a script you can use to automate the process. If you have any questions about the migration or need assistance with migrating and archiving, please don’t hesitate to contact us at carc-support@usc.edu or submit a help ticket.