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Low Disk Space - Growing disk size

Symptom

The C Drive of the SecureAuth IdP appliance continues to fill up.

Applies to

Windows 2008 R2

Resolution

1. Check to ensure the IIS log files are not filling up the drive. Make required adjustments to IIS logging. Archive log files as needed.

2. Review the size of the Pagefile. By defaul the OS is set to allow "Windows to manage the pagefile". This can be changed. It is recommended that the pagefile size be 4096 min. If performance is a problem, increase the size by 1024 until it improves. Do not exceed 3x the amount of installed RAM.

3. Check the contents of the "C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download" folder.

  • If the content is using more than 100MB, execute the code below to remove the directory. When completed, restart the appliance.

    net stop wuauserv
rmdir /S /Q C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\download
net start wuauserv

4. Check the folder size of "C:\windows\Winsxs". If Service Pack 1 has been installed the uninstall files can be removed.

  • Run the following commands to remove superseded SP1 installation files. This can free several hundred of MBs to 5 GBs of disk space and changes SP1 to be uninstallable.

    Batch

    DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /spsuperseded /hidesp
Net stop trustedinstaller
Takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*
Icacls %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\* /GRANT administrators:F
Del /q %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*

    Note

    If the DSIM process has already been run to remove the Service Pack files on the Server you will get the following message instead:

    Service Pack Cleanup can't proceed: No service pack backup files were found.
The operation completed successfully.

    Note

    If SP1 for Windows 2008R2 has not already been installed you will get the following error message:

    Error: 87
The spsuperseded option is not recognized in this context.
For more information, refer to the help.
The hidesp option is not recognized in this context.
For more information, refer to the help.

5. Install the Windows Disk Cleanup tools.

The GUI Disk Cleanup tools are not installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 by default. If you want to use them to check and remove any other uneeded files, do the following:

  1. Install the Desktop Experience Feature (Server Manager\Features\Add Feature)

  2. Download and install the Windows Server 2008 R2 executable from Microsoft KB article 2852386 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2852386)

  3. Reboot the server

  4. Run Disk Cleanup (Start\All Programs\System Tools\Accessories)

  5. Select the C: drive (Assuming this is where Windows is installed)

  6. To also remove system files, such as uneeded patch installs, click the "Clean up system files" option

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