diff --git a/src/main/java/common/PairRDDAggregator.java b/src/main/java/common/PairRDDAggregator.java
index ce394f8..4027013 100644
--- a/src/main/java/common/PairRDDAggregator.java
+++ b/src/main/java/common/PairRDDAggregator.java
@@ -3,6 +3,8 @@
 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import org.apache.spark.api.java.JavaPairRDD;
 import org.apache.spark.api.java.JavaSparkContext;
+import org.apache.spark.storage.StorageLevel;
+
 import scala.Tuple2;
 import scala.collection.JavaConverters;
 
@@ -57,10 +59,12 @@ void processBatch() {
     final var newBatchRDD = sc.parallelizePairs(currentBatch, numPartitions);
 
     // To avoid running out of memory, 'checkpoint' the RDD.  (The goal is to
-    // force it to be fully evaluated and then stored on disk, removing any need
-    // to recompute it, since receomputing requires that the original array of
-    // batch data must be present in memory somewhere).
+    // force it to be fully evaluated (and potentially evicted to disk),
+    // removing any need to recompute it, since receomputing requires that the
+    // original array of batch data must be present in memory somewhere).
+    newBatchRDD.cache();
     newBatchRDD.checkpoint();
+    // newBatchRDD.persist(StorageLevel.MEMORY_AND_DISK());
 
     batches.add(newBatchRDD);
     currentBatch = null;
diff --git a/src/main/java/prover/Prover.java b/src/main/java/prover/Prover.java
index 8ac4bb0..9c6b68b 100644
--- a/src/main/java/prover/Prover.java
+++ b/src/main/java/prover/Prover.java
@@ -127,9 +127,9 @@ static JavaSparkContext createSparkContext(boolean local) {
     spark.sparkContext().conf().set("spark.files.overwrite", "true");
 
     // checkpoint directory
-    spark.sparkContext().setCheckpointDir("checkpoint");
+    spark.sparkContext().setCheckpointDir("hdfs://ip-172-31-42-216:9000/checkpoints/");
     // clean checkpoint files if the reference is out of scope
-    spark.sparkContext().conf().set("spark.cleaner.referenceTracking.cleanCheckpoints", "true");
+    // spark.sparkContext().conf().set("spark.cleaner.referenceTracking.cleanCheckpoints", "true");
 
     // TODO: reinstate this when it can be made to work
     //   spark.sparkContext().conf().set(