Save and sync your files

how-to · Reviewed 2026-07-30 · FEAT-0035 GA

One rule governs everything else on this page: files must be under ~/work to be saved. Anything stored elsewhere on the workstation is lost when it stops.

Anything outside ~/work is lost when the workstation stops

Not warned about. Not recoverable. Only ~/work and its subdirectories sync back to Rescale Files.

If an application defaults to saving in your home directory, your Desktop, or C:\, change it, or copy the files into ~/work before you finish. This is the single most common way work is lost on a workstation.

The folders that matter

Three paths on the desktop:

Path	What it is
~/work	The working directory. The only place that syncs out.
~/attached_jobs/<job>/	Files from any job you attached — input/ for original inputs, run1/ (run2, …) for results
Cloud files desktop icon	Opens the Files tab of your Rescale account in the session's browser

Sync during a session

You don't have to wait until shutdown. Use the Sync button on the workstation page to push new files from ~/work to Rescale Files immediately.

Sync when:

• You've produced results you'd hate to lose.
• You're about to suspend on a capacity-constrained coretype and might not resume soon.
• A colleague needs the output now.

Synced files won't appear under Results until the workstation stops

An on-demand sync copies files to Rescale Files right away. You can see and download them there. But the workstation's Results tab stays empty until the workstation stops.

This is known, expected, and acknowledged as undesirable behavior. If you've synced and the Results tab looks empty, check Rescale Files: your data is there.

What happens at each stage

Action	~/work files	Files elsewhere	Disk
Sync (mid-session)	Copied to Rescale Files	Not copied	Kept
Suspend	Kept on disk	Kept on disk	Preserved
Stop	Synced to Rescale Files	Lost	Destroyed
Reboot / reprovision	Kept — data written to disk survives	Kept	Preserved

Note the difference between suspend and stop. Suspending keeps everything, including files outside ~/work, because the disk itself is preserved. Stopping syncs only ~/work and then destroys the disk.

Attached files and storage

Attached files and jobs sync in both directions while the workstation runs, changes made on the desktop propagate back. That's the sync service, and it's the thing reported broken by the "resuming in a degraded state" message.

Two behaviors worth knowing:

• Same-named attachments overwrite. Attaching a file with a name already on the desktop replaces the desktop copy silently. Cloud storage keeps both objects, but the workstation keeps only the newer one.
• Post-launch zip files aren't extracted. Archives attached at launch are extracted automatically; ones attached afterwards are not.

When an attached HPS is terminated

If an attached High-Performance Storage device hits walltime or is killed by an admin, the workstation is killed too. The workstation's working directory lives on the HPS, so it would be unusable without it.

Rescale prevents manually stopping an HPS while it's attached to a running workstation, but walltime and admin termination still apply. If you're relying on an attached HPS, watch its walltime.

Recovering from a failure

If a workstation fails unexpectedly, the disk is retained for an additional 7 days. Contact support@rescale.com within that window to recover data.

Recovery isn't universal. It requires a suspendable workstation, and doesn't apply to interruptible pricing. Treat it as a safety net that sometimes works, not a backup strategy. Syncing to Rescale Files is the actual backup.

Related

• Suspend and resume — the disk-preserving alternative to stopping
• Files and storage — Rescale Files, CFS, and HPS
• Create a workstation — attaching data at launch
• Recover an unresponsive workstation — reboot and reprovision keep the disk