Hard drive says it is almost full when it is not!

Your screenshot shows theres about 375 GB used. What do you believe is actually used?

How much ram is in the server? The OS will create a page file of that many same GB on the C drive if installed with defaults.

Do you have volume shadow copies turned on for snapshots? If so these can take up space.

Do you use VSS for backups its possible that there could be an old snap left behind.

If you can provide this information we can probably help more.

Are you running any Hyper V machines on this box?

use this program works great on Windows 2008 server

http://download.cnet.com/WinDirStat/3000-2248_4-10614593.html

Gives you a detailed view of your hard drive.

Here we go:

Your screenshot shows theres about 744 GB used. What do you believe is actually used?

About it: 744gb...

How much ram is in the server? The OS will create a page file of that many same GB on the C drive if installed with defaults.

Take a look at the new screenshot attached.

Do you have volume shadow copies turned on for snapshots? If so these can take up space.

Nope

Do you use VSS for backups its possible that there could be an old snap left behind.

Nope
Drive-3.PNG

@trgrassijr55

The first screenshot in the post was taken from the windirstat.

Does Disk Management show same thing?

How about from command prompt?

Look the new attachment  please.
Drive-4.PNG

can you expand your windirstat screenshot?
everything else is consistent except that

Are you running a VM on this machine?

lets try dir /ah from command prompt  and dir /a

@xxdcmast

Yes, several items listed.

This is a file server and virtualization (hyper-v) server.


@seth2740

Take a look at the new attachment
Drive-5.PNG

My first post I asked if this was a Hyper-V machine.

How many machines you running on this server?

What resources you using?

You have to assign disk space to the VM's

They will not show up on a disk display

I am thinking your VM's are using the space.

Found some articles for you

http://blogs.technet.com/b/tonyso/archive/2008/09/24/hyper-v-how-to-check-free-disk-space.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742412.aspx

http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/general-virtualization-articles/reclaiming-lost-hard-drive-space-on-hyper-v-host-servers-part1.html

I don't think it is the vms.

Look at the "drive-5.png" and you will see the first folder called "hyperv", it's less than 200gb.

Any other ideas? What about the shadow copies?

How much of the disk resource did you assign to each vm?

We need to check that before anything else

Remember I said the amount of the disk defined as a VM does not show in disk usage reports

So if you defined a vm with a 100 gb drive you will not see that in the disk usage reports

Hi,

There are 4 VMs and currently their VHDs are like this:

USED / TOTAL POSSIBLE

31 / 80GB
19 / 120GB
29 / 60GB
106 / 160GB

There you go that is a total of 420GB  that's is almost have of your 1 TB drive.

Like I said this does not show up in your displays because it is virtual drives.

But it does show you on the totals on the dir  command and all other displays.

Looks like to me you should add another drive and place the VM's on that drive.

No... don't think this is the problem.

It was all fine and one day the server gets like this, no explanation!!!

And about the shadow copies?

Found it!!!

It was the shadow copies from the windows server backup.

Set it to a max of 50gb now!!!

Thanks!