Server 2008 R2 Disk Space doesn't add up

[ITtech35]

Server 2008 R2 installed on C Drive Ad stored on there too.

 

D Drive is 900GB in all 800GB Used, but add up the data and it's only about 600GB, why? shown system files disk cleaned up defragged

[FN-GM]

Do you Shadow copy enabled?

Have you emptied the recycle bin?

[ITtech35]

no shadow copy, recycle bin empty, though got wds share on there, just read that can cause it?

[glennda]

Install this and look

TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs

[ITtech35]

Install this and look

TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs

 

Tried it! Used it to add up the data on there!

[Gatt]

Another good app is SpaceMonger

 

What about pagefile.sys and hiberfile.sys (though this is unlikely on a server) ?

Edited May 14, 2012 by Gatt
Really should read the post properly before posting!

[stzky]

One of our servers had hundreds of thousands of small files and a larger than normal cluster size on the format. The small files weren't filling the 'spaces' on

the disk so we had 250Gb/2Tb 'missing'. Weird, I know, but similar to your issue.

[Arthur]

What does SysInternals' Disk Usage program say?

 

du -q D:\
du -q -u D:\

 

If your D drive contains any NTFS hard-links, Windows Explorer/TreeSize (and almost every other disk usage program) will often count them more than once. DU.exe on the other-hand can count unique files.

[ITtech35]

hi i ran DU with the switches you put but i got no log back so i'm non the wiser really!

[Arthur]

This is what you should see after running DU...

 

http://i.imgur.com/60eLO.png

[Michael]

What about hidden files/folders?

[ITtech35]

This is what I got

[broc]

Not sure if this helps; we found quite a lot of $recycle.bin folders littered all over user home drives & subfolders; most were small but quite a few were 300-500mb in size. This came to the surface when a user 'deleted' a load of images to release space & then still could not save new files. I reclaimed 20gb space on our file server by getting rid of these folders. I still haven't fathomed out how they came to be left around.

[soveryapt]

It's not that your system is reserving space for the likes of recycle bin is it? I'll admit, I've not checked to see if it's still an issue on later OS, but XP used to claim the space for the size of your recycle bin as being used (so if you had an empty recycle bin, but you had allocated 100GB for it, you would find that your disk size available is less that 100GB, even though it's not being used).

 

There were a couple of other things that used to do similar - I always remember shrinking the allocation when I was running out of space on a system.

[googlemad]

I've got a VMWare 2008 R2 file server with a similar issue...The (virtual) disk used to store student profiles was initially 50gb, but then this started getting full so I increased to 100gb thinking I could just the extend the partition (Done this several times before with no problems!) - Now the Disk Management MMC reports the 100gb partition as being there but looking in Windows Explorer it claims the disk is only 60gb!

 

Tried shrinking, extending, basically every suggestion on the net with no success! Luckily we're coming up to the end of the year so I can just wipe it soon and recreate it ready for September...

[ITtech35]

no recycle bins, have empied all! Any ideas?!

[soveryapt]

no recycle bins, have empied all! Any ideas?!

 

I know that Windows once (I don't know if it still does) "reserves" the space that you have set as the maximum size of your recycle bin so that it shows as though it is in use. Try editing your recycle bin properties to make it smaller (or disable it briefly) and then see if that resolves the issue.

[ITtech35]

Wasn't Recycle bin either, already reduced that incase it was that.

 

It's fixed itself. I deleted about 3GB of data yesterday and then 200GB turned up as free!

[CAWJames]

Do you have AD user profiles on that server by any chance? If these are set for explicit user only permissions, you won't be able to see the space used.

 

This was head scratcher from last year, as in missing space on our file server.

 

James

[ITtech35]

Well I did yes but I i'm not sure any were set to user only as in gp I had it specified that admins have access to all user profiles, BUT I did delete a load of old profiles so it could have been that if it wasn't set straight away.

 

Thanks all!

[cscott]

What are you logged in to server as? an accoutn with admin rights or the Administrator itself?

 

Wehn I log into any of our servers as myself (account in local Adminstrators group on server) and when i log in as "Administrator" I get different results - especially on Windows 2008 not so bad on Widnows 2008 R2 (think issue is UAC related).