DC C: Drive almost full

[cookie_monster]

There's anumber of reasons really. On a DC I tend to go for just a straight C: drive but on file servers or boxes with many roles 'if' there's only one disk (rare these days I know) then it can make sence to partition it. Imagine having a large disk with loads of data on C: and the OS goes wrong, you could end up formatting and then restoring hundreds of Gbs of data rather than just a quick 10-20Gb restore of the OS.

[ajs]

I'm in the same boat - but it's not the previous netman's fault..

 

less than 500MB available on most servers!!! When setup, the C partition was only 10GB

 

Even better was the fact that there was only about 230GB for the entire school's data!

 

I'm quite proud that I managed to keep it running for so long without any major hiccups. Kept it running for a week with about 100MB of free space on C at one point.

[adamchapman]

Hi Al,

 

Guess who's just ordered a 4 x 1TB server!

[ajs]

In the interests of not hijacking the thread, I've emailed you!

[elsiegee40]

The one and only server I have here was set up nearly 5 years ago, not by me, with total disk space of 140GB for everything for the whole school...

 

With severe deletion during the holidays, I currently have 40% free space on average between the partitions; which will see me through this term, hopefully. I need to, but can't, update WSUS as it requires 20GB for the database alone and I only have 19GB space available in the application partition. Last summer I was promised a new server, but it looks like I've got a fight on my hands to get one now

[speckytecky]

Apologies to any who view this as a naive question but as my server experience is limited ... how do you move the print spooler without screwing up the users ability to print?

 

Move the print spooler to another drive .....

[timzim]

Apologies to any who view this as a naive question but as my server experience is limited ... how do you move the print spooler without screwing up the users ability to print?

 

What OS are you using? If you've got Print Manager installed (Windows 2003 R2 and up) right click on the name of your print server, click Properties and change the destination of your spool folder.

[speckytecky]

Thanks Timzin, It is a MS Server 2003 R DC and everything else including print server. However, what I do have a redundant RM Smartcache 2 which fell redundant last summer when Espresso put their own Linux Espresso server in - I'm wondering how difficult it would be to set the old box up as a print server that might be an answer to the problem?

[srochford]

It's easy to setup another machine as print server; it may be much harder to point all your existing clients to use it!

 

If you currently have a system where login script, group policy or similar assigns printers then it's easy to change the printserver, change the login script and at next login everything "just works"

 

If you've manually added printers over the years then changing printers is hard work - it needs that step repeating. It's possible to automate it - you can have a script which says "if printer \\server1\printer2 is configured then delete it and install \\server2\printer2"

[speckytecky]

Umh - thanks Steve.

 

Looks like I'm stuck with the set up till the next server upgrade then - our printers come across through an all user profile. Good thing is that I now know so much more when the upgrade does happen; like what not to accept as a default (12GB C: drive for a start)!! Anyhow, if I'm still at that school (budgetary cuts and all that plus we have a very proactive team from an IT company keen to get into schools touting like crazy to get a foot in the door) come the time I'll be asking a shed load of questions here in advance on what really would be best and how to set it all up.

[srochford]

our printers come across through an all user profile.

 

When you say "all users" profile do you mean a default profile on each machine? If so, it's not impossible to push out new profiles to the machine - depends on how many different printers you need to set up. If you've got (say) 100 different printers then it's hard work. If it's 5 then it's just a case of editing the profile on each of 5 machines and copying to the other machines that need to be the same.

 

If you've got space on the D: drive then changing the spooler to use D: instead of C: is very, very easy. It's non disruptive/destructive and often gets back a load of space (and more importantly means you won't run out of disc space during the day because a printer is out of paper and jobs are being queued!)

[speckytecky]

Thanks Steve,

 

Yep that's where I'm at - sounds like an ideal solution as we only have 3 networked printers and two photocopiers (one being the default printer as it comes off the Admin cost centre) throughout the school.

 

I have a notebook to set up at the start of term (HD replaced under warranty) not currently imaging so it's a manual set up so an ideal opportunity to test the change I hope.

[srochford]

You also don't have to do "big bang" approach. You can have both servers running at the same time and pointing to the same printers; you then just gradually move all your users across.