Troubleshooting Low Disk Space

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Something we encounter in IT frequently (more-so with older servers than newer builds) is the challenge of an ever dwindling amount of disk space on our servers. This blog will explain a few reasons as to the disk space shrinkage, and what we can do to combat that.

Of course a few of the solutions in this blog post are NOT the only solutions to the issue. There are MANY different things you can do to clear up disk space, this blog is just designed to give you a few ideas of what is safe and not-safe to delete.

The first step into determining low disk space is to get a good tool for reviewing the space on the server. There are many tools out there to give you a good overview of the disk space. A few of the tools are:

WinDirStat: www.windirstat.info

Windirstat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TreeSize: www.jam-software.com/freeware/

treesize

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Space Monger: http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php

spacemonger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With any of these applications, you are able to view the space in a better fashion, and determine where the biggest offenders lie. In some cases, you will need to move data files/folders, however there are a few things that can be done to clean up the OS files, which will continue to grow as new updates are released, logging is enabled, and sites are visited. One of the best tools to clean up a server quickly with unneeded files is through the use of disk cleanup. This is a tool that can be found in accessories/system tools, and simply running it, and choosing the files you would like to cleanup, will instantly remove unneeded junk.

However disk cleanup does not get as detailed as other free applications you can find online will get you. One such application is Piriform’s C-Cleaner, which can be downloaded at this location: www.piriform.com

Foreman_12631698_4969_ccleaner_540x415

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This will do a deeper level clean than what disk cleanup can offer.

If you have cleaned everything you can with this tool, but still need to go a little further, here are a few ideas:

IIS logs can usually be removed. These logs can be found here:

  1. Windows\system32\LogFiles\W3SVC folders (the numbers apply to sites) FOR IIS 6
  2. Inetpub\logfiles\W3SVC folders (the numbers apply to sites) for IIS 7

If the server has Trend Micro antivirus, they make a great cleanup tool that purges old updates and cleans the junk that can accompany many antiviruses. This tool can be found here: http://esupport.trendmicro.com/pages/Worry-Free-Business-Security-Standard-Advanced-Disk-Cleaner.aspx

If the server is 2008 or higher, and does not report errors, it might have a large reporting queue at C:\Program Data\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportingQueue, these can be removed either manually, or by going into the Problems and Solutions GUI, viewing the history and deleting the events.

If shadow copies are causing the low disk space, you can do this:

  1. In CMD
  2. type: diskshadow
  3. list shadows all (this will list the shadow copies with a unique ID)
  4. delete shadows id 36350cd8-5ae2-4ccc-a9e3-e0db64116883 => The ID of the shadow you want to delete if you have multiple and want to remove one
  5. OR delete shadows all

If you have a Windows Small Business Server 2008 or 2011, This technet blog was designed just for you, and it covers many areas of SBS that you can clean up as well: http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2010/03/02/recovering-disk-space-on-the-c-drive-in-small-business-server-2008.aspx

As I mentioned earlier, there are MUCH more areas you can clean up, but hopefully this blog gives you a few ideas to as to what you can safely delete.

Domain Admins! Join a computer to your domain REMOTELY!

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Hey there domain administrators.  Did you know it was possible to join a computer to your domain remotely?  Not so hard at all.

First, you must have VPN configured on your network.  Your VPN can be configured directly to your firewall, or through your firewall to your Windows Server Routing and Remote Access.  (How to setup PPTP on a Windows Server)

Once you’ve configured your VPN, you are now ready to join computers to the domain remotely.

First, connect to the VPN, so that your computer receives a local IP address from your network.

Next, open your computer properties to join to domain as you normally would internally.  Attempt to join your computer to the domain.  It will prompt you for domain admin credentials if your route has worked, and woila!  your are now joined.  Reboot the computer.

If you don’t get the prompt for domain admin credentials, that most likely means you are not able to ping the domain controller via hostname, and you will need to manually edit your hosts file.

To do this:

  1. Goto:  C:\Windows\Syste32\drivers\etc
  2. Open your hosts file with Wordpad “Run as Administrator”.  You may need to open Wordpad as an administrator first, and then open the file
  3. Goto the bottom of your hosts file and enter the following:  ”IP Address”, Tab 2 X’s, “server name” - where the IP address is the IP of your Domain Controller, and the Server Name is the host name of your Domain Controller.
  4. Save the hosts file
Now try joining your computer to the domain again.  This should work for you.
Good luck!