Run out of space on system drive - Server2008 as part of Essential business server set up. - 140 GB Drive TreeSize says no free space but only 43 GB of folders so need to know where space has gone.

Try Right-Click of Treesize and Run as Administrator,

You'll then be able to see far more of what is used on your drive and where.

Thanks Alan

Have checked the SQL Logs and can't see anything very large. When we had the large log files before they would show up in TreeSize. Currently SQL logs are 25 and 69 MB.

Bob

Just ran Treesize as administrator and get same result. (was logged in with Admin rights before).

Thanks Bob

I use WinDirStat and prefer it!

http://windirstat.info/

It shows you total content in file type on a specific drive.

I quick fix is to check the Paging file. If it's on the C drive and you have another partitition, I suggest allocating it on the 2nd drive and reducing the file size on the C drive down to  about 10 to 20% of it's original size.

The 2nd drive should also be an internal drive, not external USB.

You need to restart the server, but ti will be an immediate change.

This should help

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winservergen/thread/19d96eb1-669c-4605-8d63-7337f1c09084

That's not about being logged in with admin rights, it's about using "run as administrator" to give tree size the elevated permissions it needs to see the full disk.

Did you right-click and select "run as administrator"?

Sorry didn't explain properly did the right click and ran as administrator and got same results

Thanks

Bob

Thanks for move paging file idea will try if we don't get a more permanent fix. I'm worried that having "lost" 100 GB over the weekend gaining 8GB will just keep it going for a few hours without curing the problem or getting back the disk space.

Thanks

Bob

What does windirstat show as the top file type on the drive running out of space?

Struggling to get WindirStat to run on server.
1) server security wont allow direct download.
2) done load on to other machine, then copy to server gets error message that file is corrupt.

Will keep trying.

Bob

Afraid WinDirStat wont run got someone to download it on to server drive then when run it errors :-

The installer you are trying to use is corrupted or incomplete etc etc

Thanks

Bob

Which file are you downloading?

1. Give full permission to "System Volume Information", other hidden folders and check the folder size
2. Run "C Drive" Disk cleanup
3. If possible restart the system & check

On website WindirStat.info - link which takes you to http://www.downloadbestsoft.com/download/windirstat1_1_2_setup.exe the file downloads OK and will run on a desktop PC but errors on the server. Tried it three times.

Thanks

Bob

kirankkhbl

Having changed permissions "System Volume Information" is 20.2Kb. If I rerun TreeSize it now reports on "System Volume Information" and includes it in it analysis.  Free Space 0 MB (of 139,351MB) but the file and folder usage is 43,256 MB so we still have a missing 100 GB of disk space. I can't find disk Cleanup were it used to be is it changed for Server 2008?

Is this clean Windows 2008 installation or some kind of upgrade from old OS? Do you have there Windows.old folder?
Disable shadow copies and delete restore points.
Also, what backup software is used on this machine?

Noxcho

Its a standard Essential Business Server Installation - Main Server installed from scratch on new machines about 4 years ago.

I've requested that this question be closed as follows:

Accepted answer: 0 points for TwoBobBit's comment #a38777475

for the following reason:

The system is running, with a question mark over the SQL Logging, and reporting disk usage correctly. Perhaps I should have just restarted the server, but with uncertainty over the file system reporting and lack of disk space it seemed risky and could of been the start of more serious problems.

My very first comment talks about SQL log files, so if you have a 100Gb log file, you will find the link I posted very useful.

Objecting to closure based on the above.

Alan

The problem was we didn't know we had a very large log file and had no way of telling. So a pure mention of log files didn't solve the problem. The problem file didn't show up on a directory listing of the folder etc. It seems a bit much to claim a document regarding log files in a different context provided a solution. All posts made helped but I couldn't say one provided the answer which was actually to simply reboot the server.

Sure - they all helped, but the point is that I mentioned that SQL log files may well be the problem and you mention that you have a 100Gb log file which is chewing up the space.

The reboot helped you to determine that the files exists, but the fact remains that the log file is the main space hog and I mentioned that this is quite often the case in my opening comment.

The fact that you couldn't see the log file does not mean that my comment wasn't valid.

I agree with Alan, that was a bulls eye shot with SQL Log in a very first sentence mentioned.

Thanks noxcho.

Regarding my closure of this question I thanked all the experts for their inputs because they all made helpful suggestions but none actually pointed to what I would consider the “Accepted Solution”.

As fairly long term user of Experts Exchange I, like I’m sure a lot of subscribers, use it as a reference tool i.e. search for a question highlighting the same or similar problem to the one I’m having and looking at the way it was solved. The most annoying aspect of using Experts Exchange in this way is coming across solutions which lead you of in the wrong direction because the “Accepted Solution” isn’t actually the case.

To have specifically highlighted AlanHardisty’s answer as a solution would create another case where an “Accepted Solution” wouldn’t help anybody with a similar problem.  The article/Blog the answer linked to related to moving log files for a setup we don’t have and the first part of it relates to using a program to see file sizes much as the other experts were doing. Had I highlighted AlanHardisty’s post as the solution anybody looking at this question as a possible solution may well assume they needed to reconfigure their system and move the log files as per his article. This would not be the case and may have caused other problems.

AlanHardisty mentioned SQL Log files but then so had I in my question and I had checked the size of them before asking the question and said as such within the question,  the problem was the server was somehow losing or miss recording file sizes so we couldn’t see them to fix them.

I would be happy to award points for the suggestions I received but would not be happy to flag any answer as a solution.

You can select your own comment as accepted and give to Alan's post as assisted award. The two opinions combined (yours and alan's) makes it perfect solution. Reference to the log made by alan and your further investigation that showed the log is not seen as the culprit (although it is). If anyone else meets the same problem - this solution should lead him the right way.