adamch25
asked on
Server keeps running out of disk space
I have a Windows 2003 Server (Standard) with a 12gb primary C: OS partition that is running out of disk space within 5 minutes of booting up. The primary partition has 450mb of free disk space and the page file is on the secondary D: drive. As soon as the server boots up I can watch the C drive lose disk space from within My Computer every 5 seconds. It goes down to 25mb and then restarts to 450mb and then goes back down again until eventually the server crashes. I've ran Sophos Rootkit Detection, which didn't finish, but showed nothing up to the point of the system crash.
jpquonce
Check the startup (msconfig) and see if there is anything in there that may be sticking out. I would check both startup and services tab.
Someting is obviously writing to the disk....
Boot in safe mode and see what services start to run when the disk space start to go lower.
Also here is some tips to move services to another machine - this will help buy time to troubleshoot
http://www.lwcomputing.com/tips/static/bootdrivesize.asp
Boot in safe mode and see what services start to run when the disk space start to go lower.
Also here is some tips to move services to another machine - this will help buy time to troubleshoot
http://www.lwcomputing.com/tips/static/bootdrivesize.asp
What is this server used for? It could be a legitimate process that is taking up the space. Overall 450 MB really isnt that much free space to have on the main drive.
I would try to free up some disk space at least to 1GB. You can remove the patch uninstall directories, and run the compression to save disk space.
I would try to free up some disk space at least to 1GB. You can remove the patch uninstall directories, and run the compression to save disk space.
ASKER
Server is a web server and is colocated 30 miles from my house so I am attempting to repair this remotely. I've got all the large program files installed on the D drive (MDaemon, MySQL, PHP, etc.). As soon as remote hands reboots the server I will try msconfig. I checked the "run" registry key for both current user and local machine and they were clean as a whistle.
ASKER
Still no luck here. I brought the server to my office on friday and when I booted it up it was good all day. I was also able to clear off some old cached installers to free up 1.3gb of space. I left it on over the weekend and when I came back in today it was out of disk space again. Was down to 26mb and then came back up to 430mb so it didn't even recover to the 1.3gb. I loaded msconfig and all is normal there. I also loaded up Process Master to see if there were any rogue processes running and all was good there too. I did load up SCL and noticed that the ISA Server database was randomly writing data to the error log on the C drive but nothing over 10mb.
ASKER
I found the problem but I don't know how to fix it or if its normal behavior. Windows is creating folders inside of C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistrib
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ASKER
That did the trick. Points awarded.