LAN-Tech Network Management

Internet forums are full of questions entitled “where is my missing drive space”, or “HELP! I am running out of drive space on the system partition”. There are some known issues, addressed below, where SBS is known to generate large log files but very often it is due to hidden contents of user folders. The Redirected Folders feature is usually enabled  with SBS and with the default Group Policy a users folder is protected and hidden from view by all others, including Domain Administrators. Therefore when browsing to a user’s private folders such as My Documents, not only will you be denied access, but the properties of the folder will show:  Size = 0 bytes, and Contains = 0 Files, 0 Folders.

This is due to a permission set by group policy, within the Small Business Server Folder Redirection Policy, when the folder was created.

Editing the policy will not change existing folder permissions. You can change the permissions if required, though I strongly discourage doing so if for no other reason that user’s have a right to privacy. If you feel you must, Susan Bradley has nicely outlined the process in the following link:  http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2010/02/28/getting-access-to-the-my-documents-redirected-folders.aspx

However, even though you cannot open the file, it is possible to see the contents of the folders (folder and file names) and the size of the contents by using an application named Treesize Professional from:  http://www.jam-software.com/treesize/  There is a 30 day free trial period, but I recommend buying it to have in your “tool box” to quickly locate that user that has 30GB of movies saved in their redirected my documents. Treesize will provide a very nice graphical overview of drive space distribution and you can quickly drill down to the source of the problem. As an example; in the following two images of the same directory, Windows shows 113 MB in use, where Treesize includes the hidden directories and accurately reveals 58.4 GB of consumed drive space.

Treesize can be used in many other ways for storage management but is invaluable in locating folders that are consuming large amounts of space on your drives.

Other known issues:

Tree size can also help to locate other space consuming culprits. Once located the information and links below, organized by file paths, may be able to assist with resolving.

The following link reviews numerous known file locations that have a tendency to accumulate large log files. This link is extremely valuable in addressing the key space issues with SBS:  http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2010/03/02/recovering-disk-space-on-the-c-drive-in-small-business-server-2008.aspx

• C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles
• C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs\
• C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs\WebWorkplace
• C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs\MonitoringServiceLogs
• C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Data\badmail
• C:\Windows\system32\winevt\logs\
• c:\Windows\system32\certlog
• C:\Windows\SYSYSI\SSEE\MSSQL.2005\MSSQL
• C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\

C:\WSUS  Windows Server Update Services can build up many unnecessary updates that can be cleaned up by running the WSUS “Server Cleanup Wizard” located under Administrative Tools | Windows Server Update Services | SBSname | Options | Server Cleanup Wizard

C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Mailbox\xxxx Storage Group Keep in mind deleted e-mails are retained in the Exchange database until you do a backup using an Exchange aware backup application such as the built-in SBS backup utility.

C:\Windows\winsxs:   See: “How to Alleviate Disk Space Pressure Caused By a Large Windows Component Store (WinSxS) Directory”  http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2592038  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2795190

C:\Windows\System32\logfiles\WMI\trace.log  You can stop this logging by editing the registry key (if necessary) to 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\GlobalLogger\Start = 0

You may also want to review an excellent article by Lee Wilbur on regaining space and managing the system partition:  http://www.lwcomputing.com/tips/static/bootdrivesize.asp

Should you need to gain additional space you can also move some of the SBS data files to another drive or partition such as Exchange, Users Shared Data and Redirected Folders, Sharepoint, and WSUS. To do so use the SBS wizards in the SBS console:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc527581(WS.10).aspx

Added Nov 30, 2011…….

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue  This contains error reports generated by Windows. These files on some systems, though not hidden, the folder properties show as 0 MB. TreeSize will also display the properties of this folder correctly. Though I don’t recommend disabling the reporting you can do so by going to: control panel | problem reports and solutions | advanced settings | off

C:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\HTTPERR  These are HTTP error logs much of which is generated by IIS. If there are a large number of errors you should look into why, but you can reduce the chances of it filling up with log files again by applying the following  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820729

Remember you can always download a trial copy of SBS to use for testing configurations and modifications from the Microsoft Evaluation Download Center:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/evalcenter/default.aspx?ocid=aff-c-ca-jtc–MVP52