# Memory error insufficient disc space

**URL:** <https://brian.discourse.group/t/memory-error-insufficient-disc-space/1471>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [12 July 2025 17:42 UTC](https://brian.discourse.group/t/memory-error-insufficient-disc-space/1471 "2025-07-12T17:42:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![mstimberg](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/brian.discourse.group/mstimberg/32/11_2.png) [@mstimberg](https://brian.discourse.group/u/mstimberg)\
**Post date:** [16 July 2025 15:29 UTC](https://brian.discourse.group/t/memory-error-insufficient-disc-space/1471/2 "2025-07-16T15:29:45Z")

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Dear @MitchG_HunterCollege, the issue here is not disk space but memory in the sense of RAM. This is a serious limitation at the moment: all recorded values are stored in RAM before being written out to the disk in the end. The required memory can be quite big, for example, recording 2000 neurons with a timestep of 0.015msf for 10s, means 2000 × 666666 values of 8 bytes (double precision) each ≈ 10GB for each recorded variable… Until we support directly recording to disk, there are some rather complex workarounds like the one mentioned here: [Saving data to disk in the middle of a simulation in standalone mode](https://brian.discourse.group/t/saving-data-to-disk-in-the-middle-of-a-simulation-in-standalone-mode/1149)

I think the best approach for now is to choose a bigger time step for the recordings with the `dt` parameter (e.g. `StateMonitor(..., dt=1*ms)` and/or record fewer neurons. Changing from double to single precision (using `StateMonitor(..., dtype=np.float32)` will also half the required memory. Hope that gives some leads!

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