Note: This FAQ is intended for users of Stata 8 or earlier.

Why am I getting a message that there is no room on my hard drive?

By default, Stata will save temporary files in the directory pointed to by the TEMP (DOS) or TMPDIR (Unix) environment variable. If you are working with a large dataset, and if the hard drive or filesystem to which Stata is writing temporary files is low on space, you may get error messages saying you have no more room to perform calculations (or something similar).

If you have another hard drive or another filesystem with more space, you can change the temporary directory location to alleviate the problem.

To verify the location of the temporary directory Stata is using, you can type the following commands from within Stata:

        . tempfile junk
        . display "`junk'"

Ignore the filename and look at the directory—this is where Stata is saving temporary files.

Windows users can reset the TEMP environment variable in DOS either before starting Stata or in the autoexec.bat (and then rebooting the computer). You just need to make sure that the directory you specify exists. In DOS, type

        C:\WINDOWS> mkdir e:\temp

        C:\WINDOWS> set TEMP=e:\temp
        
        C:\WINDOWS> c:\stata\wstata.exe

Unix users can reset the TMPDIR environment variable in their shell either before starting Stata or in their .cshrc (or equivalent) shell initial settings file. In csh, type

        % setenv TMPDIR /alt/tmp

If you now execute the same tempfile and display Stata commands mentioned above, you will see that the temporary files are now stored in the new location.