File Server Shared Drives Rapidly Using Up Space

[Bankesy]

Hello

 

Our file server is Windows Server 2003 and contains many shared drives, student area, staff area and all user documents.

 

At the moment it just seems to be running out of space regularly.

 

I'm wondering if it could be because offline files is configured for all users?

 

Any advice would be welcome

 

Thank you

[cullingsh]

Bit hard to say, there's no hint of number of users, amount of storage etc. Have you got an upgrade planned to move away from Server 2003 onto a new server with a decent amount of space - might just save this issue all round.

[NewFormz]

Have you tried something like Tree Size to help you see what is using up all the space? It might help you work out the problem.

[TriggerHappyUK]

I use Disk Pie

 

Not sure you can get it any more.

 

Did a quick search and came up with something very similar though.

 

Disktective

Edited February 12, 2015 by TriggerHappyUK

[Bankesy]

In total there are roughly 700 users and the total capacity of the server is 1.25TB

 

Yes in the summer two new servers are making there way to me but it won't last that long

 

Only two weeks ago I had 165GB free space and now it's down to 115GB, this Tree Size looks like a good option

[zag]

Take a look at my blog post for reducing the size of school shares. There are some good tips in there.

 

Our total storage is just under 600GB for about 1000 users

 

http://www.edugeek.net/blogs/zag/2151-managing-total-storage-schools.html

[tonyd]

You might also like to try WinDirStat as another free way to view what is eating up all your space, WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics. It take a little getting used to, but is a very powerful way to spot what is happening, you can also use it to help in finding duplicate sets of large folders too.

[timbo343]

Treesize is great! I also use Fast Stone Photo resizer for all the photos which are about 4mb each - reduce them down by 50% and they come out about 0.5mb. I keep telling staff they dont need them that big unless they want to do photo editing or full on banner printing and Any video converter for converting the large video files to .mp4.

[SHimmer45]

faststone provide some good utils for resizing pictures which will free up space not everyone needs to take pictures which are "4000x4000dpi" when they they are being added into a presentation.

 

might be useful to look to see if you can archive off any material which is very old / not used but this is a little tricky sometimes, all down to how people are using their data.

if offline files is setup and people are connecting laptops for example which have alot of personal stuff on them this wont help, your not responsible for personal data.

 

As your upgrading in the summer id put some thought into if you want to start enforcing quota's / data de-duplication to make the space go further

[Davit2005]

Another vote for TreeSize, you will probably find a lot of Media files in appropriate places as well as personal media files that should not be on the shared storage.

 

Also use quota's it will encourage people to sort out and reduce any old unneeded files.

[JRowley]

TreeSize is a very useful tool for determining who is using up the disk space, where they are using it, and what type of files are using it.

[fiza]

Offline files might be your culprit. In the past we had staff laptops with offline files enabled. Some staff installed ITunes and their libraries synced back to the server and took up all the space.

[Bankesy]

Yes exactly i am suspecting similar behaviour.

 

Luckily i took notes on all the original GPO configurations before enabling offline files and have disabled everything again now just to monitor the difference.

 

I'm thinking maybe I could just enable offline files on a per laptop basis?

 

Should there be an offline files cache on the server I could delete to free up space?