First, I made a relaxation calculation of my systems. After this, I made charge calculation to export the CHGCAR and I used it to calculate de DOS. After DOS calculation, I removed the CHGCAR. After this, I used the LOBSTER to project some orbitals and to make COHP analysis. Now, I have memory of disk problems caused by my WAVECAR, that exceeds 9 G.
HI,
Ultimately, the question is " Am I done with this system?"
If you wish to run further DFT calculations then the wavecar (which stores the Fourier coefficients of the wavefunction) is really useful as it enables you to skip the SCF section (as you can read in the answer from the last time you did the calculation).
On the other hand, if you think you are "done" with the system, or it won't take long to redo the SCF portion of the simulation then I would just delete the wavecar; it is sitting there taking up space for no benefit!
Hope that helps!
For most calculations, you should only keep the CHGCAR since DFT as a theory relies on Electron Density. In fact, to conserve storage usage on the HPC system I use, I switch off printing the WAVECAR file by using the tag LWAVE = .FALSE. If you need to restart a calculation, simply use the CHGCAR file.
For some calculations, however, it is necessary to keep your WAVECAR files. Some exceptions I can think of at the top of my mind calculations are GW and optical properties calculations. Here are some examples from VASP's manual.
https://www.vasp.at/wiki/index.php/Practical_guide_to_GW_calculations
https://www.vasp.at/wiki/index.php/Bethe-Salpeter-equations_calculations
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