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    Hi, 

    I have a disk space problem that seems to have appear since my last reboot (yesterday for KB950193). I did not see any recent thread speaking about it, sorry if another thread exist about this.

    First the presentations ... I have a custom build french WHS (1GB Ram) with 2 * 500GB HDD (one is the system) and one 250 GB HDD. I have made a full reinstall of the system in honnor of the PP1 last month.


    Yesterday I had like 150/200GB of free space and when I came home this afternoon, I had message saying I only had 10GB left. I used "Disk management" Add-in to check if it was not a "data migration" problem, but all my drives are now around 97% full. I removed some folder duplication, done some cleanup and I saw that I really had a problem.

    In the "Server Storage" tab I now have the "System" share of the pie chart that currently is at 221GB of data and still growing (it was around 205GB or so an hour ago).

    I am not making any backup currently, I have tried to do a backup cleanup, I don't do much data movement right now (except for a torrent seeding).

    I did not change or install anything between the 2 the last reboot and it is the first time I have noticed that the "system" share of the pie chart takes more that 20GB.

    Do anyone see anything similar ?

    Thanks for your help.

    Regards.

    Ps: right now it is at 224GB and I only have 16.7GB left ;)
    Wednesday, September 24, 2008 9:26 PM

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    I once turned off duplication on over a terabyte worth of data and it showed up as the system part of the pie for a while.  I just waited it out and it corrected itself.  I assumed that it showed up there until it deleted all the data that is no longer duplicated.. 
    athlon 3400, 2gb ram, 9 drives totaling about 3.5 tbs.
    • Marked as answer by Atomusk Thursday, September 25, 2008 9:26 PM
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:03 AM
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    Atomusk said:

    It could be the torrent going wild but it would not explaint the "system" share growing.
    The "download folder" of the torrent software is on the root of D: (as adviced as far as I know) and there should not be any shadow copy of the root of d: (as far as I know).

    As of PP1 the system storage is calculated differently - as Jonas Svensson pointed out. The system storage size displayed in the pi-chart now gives you the storage usage of all files in the server that are not part of the server shares. From what you described it looks like some files are stored on the D: partition (or maybe even the other secondary disks) ouside the shares. This could very well be the torrent files (you write that it is configured to write to a root directory on D:).

    If not then then apparently some other files are taking disk space outside the shares (like the System Volume Information, shadow copies or orphaned WHS shadow files Jonas was mentioning). The only way to find out is to RDP to the WHS desktop and check the disk contents. Using Windows Explorer check the following directories on D: Careful: do not change/delete/rename any of these files!

    D:\DE\Shares - should only contain (part of) the files on your shares.
    D:\DE\Folders - should only list some GUID-named folders containing the backups and some other system files.
    D:\Shares - should only list your shared folder directories.
    D:\Folders - should only list some GUID-named folders containing the backups and some other system files.
    D:\System Volume Information (hidden/system)
    D:\RECYCLER (hidden.system)
    These are the only directories that should be in the root of the D partition. Any other directory would be suspicious and may be the taking the addition storage.

    Next check the contents of the secondary disks using Windows Explorer to check the directories on C:\FS\{someid}:
    C:\FS\{someid}\DE\Shares - should only contain (part of) the files on your shares.
    C:\FS\{someid}\DE\Folders - should only list some GUID-named folders containing the backups and some other system files.
    C:\FS\{someid}\System Volume Information (hidden/system)

    Again, these are the only directories that should be on the secondary drives. Any others would be suspicious and may be the taking the addition storage.

    [Edit: You might also want to run "chkdsk /f" on the drives. Just to make sure this that the disks file structures are OK?]

    No home server like Home Server
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 6:58 PM
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    Could be the Torrent running wild, however could also be some other issue. Can you disable (kill) the Torrent?

    Also it might be a good idea to shutdown the server before this goes any further, this will buy you some time in which a solution to your problem may be found.
    Wednesday, September 24, 2008 10:06 PM
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    @Atomusk:
    Can you check for files in your System Volume Information folders on all of your Hard Drives?

    To do this, you will need to be remoted into the administrator's desktop on your Windows Home Server. 

    Once logged in to the administrator's desktop you will then need to change the folder options in Explorer.  This is done by selecting Tools and then Folder Options from the menu in Explorer.

    Once you have the Folder Options open, click on the View Tab and ensure that "Show hidden files and folders" is selected and "Hide Protected operating system files" is unchecked.  Then click "OK".

    When you have the correct view settings you should be able to see a folder called "System Volume Information" on the root of your C:\ drive.  You will not be able to access it until you grant yourself the proper access.  To do this, right click on the folder and select properties.

    In the properties dialog, select the security tab.  Then add the Administrator account and grant full control over the folder.

    You will then be able to open the folder and browse its contents.  It should be fairly empty, but please let me know if you see a large number of big files.

    The same proceedure should be done for each drive on the system.  To access the  "System Volume Information" for other drives on the system you will need to navigate to the C:\fs directory on your home server and then repeat the steps above.

    Please reply back with your findings.
    Thanks
    -j
    Wednesday, September 24, 2008 10:42 PM
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    If you disconnect your routers connection to the inet (to test torrent) is the space still evaporating?

    Still.......
    Grey
    Wednesday, September 24, 2008 10:43 PM
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    Also FWIW, the amount of system usage in the pie chart did change in pp1 from the "standard" 20gb.  It includes "other stuff" now.  I forget what, but I am sure someone will chime in and fill in the blank.

    Still.....
    Grey
    Wednesday, September 24, 2008 10:47 PM
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      I should have disabled the torrent before going to bed but it was in seeding phase, so it should not do any "disk write"...

    As an update, right now, the "System" share is 227GB and it seems the "growing" has stopped.

    It could be the torrent going wild but it would not explaint the "system" share growing.
    The "download folder" of the torrent software is on the root of D: (as adviced as far as I know) and there should not be any shadow copy of the root of d: (as far as I know).


    @Jonas Svensson

    C: , D: , FS/J and FS/O   "System Volume Information" are almost completly empty (only a 20KB tracking log file and a MountPointManagerRemoteDatabase file on every folder)


    And for the "System" share of the piechart I would like to know what is contains now ;)

    Shadow Copies I guess.

    For test I checked for shadow copies in my shares and it seems I dont have any "previous version" of files in any of my shares (probably removed in order to free space by the system I guess).

    I have also launched a process explorer on the box to check for any suspissous activity and did not find anything.

    Thanks for your help.
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 6:05 AM
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    I once turned off duplication on over a terabyte worth of data and it showed up as the system part of the pie for a while.  I just waited it out and it corrected itself.  I assumed that it showed up there until it deleted all the data that is no longer duplicated.. 
    athlon 3400, 2gb ram, 9 drives totaling about 3.5 tbs.
    • Marked as answer by Atomusk Thursday, September 25, 2008 9:26 PM
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:03 AM
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    As Jonas mentioned, you should check the contents of your C: drive.  Perhaps use a third party software (i.e. TreeSize) to find the offending 'large' files.

    Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:33 AM
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    Atomusk said:

     And for the "System" share of the piechart I would like to know what is contains now ;)


    This is the description of the new implementation of the Server Storage from the Power Pack 1 release documentation

            A new and improved storage size algorithm is implemented for listing Server Storage usage.

    ·      Free space is now measured from the hard drives connected to your home server.

    ·      Prior to Power Pack 1, the System size was computed based on the size of the C: partition (20GB) and the size of D:\folders\.  With Power Pack 1, the System size is now calculated as total size minus the sum of the shared folders, duplicated folders, and home computer backups.

    ·      After Power Pack 1 is installed, you may see an increase in the System size because of the new algorithm. The increased size accounts for volume shadow copies, the Recycle Bin, as well as any files that are stored on your home server outside the shared folders or application folders.

    To reclaim the space, try the following:

    ·      Empty the Recycle Bin. If you use your home server as a desktop, the Recycle Bin may have some files in it.

    ·      Check the following folder to view and delete and orphan shadow files: folders\{1618D36B-F4E7-4360-B070-A32070519DC9}\

    ·      Delete the existing shadow copies. To do this, open a command prompt window on your home server (via a Remote Desktop Connection or using the Windows Home Server Toolkit Add-in) and run the following command: vssadmin delete shadows/all.

    Caution! If you do this, all the folder and file previous versions in your Windows Home Server shared folders will be deleted.

    -j
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 2:16 PM
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    Atomusk said:

    It could be the torrent going wild but it would not explaint the "system" share growing.
    The "download folder" of the torrent software is on the root of D: (as adviced as far as I know) and there should not be any shadow copy of the root of d: (as far as I know).

    As of PP1 the system storage is calculated differently - as Jonas Svensson pointed out. The system storage size displayed in the pi-chart now gives you the storage usage of all files in the server that are not part of the server shares. From what you described it looks like some files are stored on the D: partition (or maybe even the other secondary disks) ouside the shares. This could very well be the torrent files (you write that it is configured to write to a root directory on D:).

    If not then then apparently some other files are taking disk space outside the shares (like the System Volume Information, shadow copies or orphaned WHS shadow files Jonas was mentioning). The only way to find out is to RDP to the WHS desktop and check the disk contents. Using Windows Explorer check the following directories on D: Careful: do not change/delete/rename any of these files!

    D:\DE\Shares - should only contain (part of) the files on your shares.
    D:\DE\Folders - should only list some GUID-named folders containing the backups and some other system files.
    D:\Shares - should only list your shared folder directories.
    D:\Folders - should only list some GUID-named folders containing the backups and some other system files.
    D:\System Volume Information (hidden/system)
    D:\RECYCLER (hidden.system)
    These are the only directories that should be in the root of the D partition. Any other directory would be suspicious and may be the taking the addition storage.

    Next check the contents of the secondary disks using Windows Explorer to check the directories on C:\FS\{someid}:
    C:\FS\{someid}\DE\Shares - should only contain (part of) the files on your shares.
    C:\FS\{someid}\DE\Folders - should only list some GUID-named folders containing the backups and some other system files.
    C:\FS\{someid}\System Volume Information (hidden/system)

    Again, these are the only directories that should be on the secondary drives. Any others would be suspicious and may be the taking the addition storage.

    [Edit: You might also want to run "chkdsk /f" on the drives. Just to make sure this that the disks file structures are OK?]

    No home server like Home Server
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 6:58 PM
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    Theo van Elsberg said:

    As of PP1 the system storage is calculated differently - as Jonas Svensson pointed out. The system storage size displayed in the pi-chart now gives you the storage usage of all files in the server that are not part of the server shares. From what you described it looks like some files are stored on the D: partition (or maybe even the other secondary disks) ouside the shares. This could very well be the torrent files (you write that it is configured to write to a root directory on D:).

    That is correct.  Any file on D:\ outside the scope of WHS is considered "System" by WHS.

    Theo van Elsberg said:

    If not then then apparently some other files are taking disk space outside the shares (like the System Volume Information, shadow copies or orphaned WHS shadow files Jonas was mentioning). The only way to find out is to RDP to the WHS desktop and check the disk contents. Using Windows Explorer check the following directories on D: Careful: do not change/delete/rename any of these files!

    D:\DE\Shares - should only contain (part of) the files on your shares.
    D:\DE\Folders - should only list some GUID-named folders containing the backups and some other system files.
    D:\Shares - should only list your shared folder directories.
    D:\Folders - should only list some GUID-named folders containing the backups and some other system files.
    D:\System Volume Information (hidden/system)
    D:\RECYCLER (hidden.system)
    These are the only directories that should be in the root of the D partition. Any other directory would be suspicious and may be the taking the addition storage.

    Next check the contents of the secondary disks using Windows Explorer to check the directories on C:\FS\{someid}:
    C:\FS\{someid}\DE\Shares - should only contain (part of) the files on your shares.
    C:\FS\{someid}\DE\Folders - should only list some GUID-named folders containing the backups and some other system files.
    C:\FS\{someid}\System Volume Information (hidden/system)

    Again, these are the only directories that should be on the secondary drives. Any others would be suspicious and may be the taking the addition storage.

    [Edit: You might also want to run "chkdsk /f" on the drives. Just to make sure this that the disks file structures are OK?]

    No home server like Home Server



    Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:08 PM
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    thank you everyone for theses answers.

    There is no shadow copies in the system (vssadmin delete shadows /all told me there was nothing).

    So I think the problem could be with D:\DE\Shares. This folder have exactly the same size as my "system" share (227GB right now).
    But even after I rebooted and even throught Demigrator is working (and doing some work at boot), the "system"size  does not change.


    I am runing right now a chkdsk /f on the computer, but I am a little bit lost there  ...

    Edit: just for info (I don't think it could change something but you never know), my system date was off a whole day (it was the 24th instead of the 25th) but the hour was good - don't ask me why ...

    And I did not find anything interesting on the events manager.
    • Edited by Atomusk Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:37 PM
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:26 PM
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    Atomusk said:

    thank you everyone for theses answers.

    There is no shadow copies in the system (vssadmin delete shadows /all told me there was nothing).

    So I think the problem could be with D:\DE\Shares. This folder have exactly the same size as my "system" share (227GB right now).
    But even after I rebooted and even throught Demigrator is working (and doing some work at boot), the "system"size  does not change.


    I am runing right now a chkdsk /f on the computer, but I am a little bit lost there  ...



    But that is not outside the scope of WHS (unless you are saving files there directly, which is a REALLY bad idea).  What about in your torrent folder that is in D:\?  How much data is there at the moment?
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:38 PM
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    kariya21 said:

    Atomusk said:

    thank you everyone for theses answers.

    There is no shadow copies in the system (vssadmin delete shadows /all told me there was nothing).

    So I think the problem could be with D:\DE\Shares. This folder have exactly the same size as my "system" share (227GB right now).
    But even after I rebooted and even throught Demigrator is working (and doing some work at boot), the "system"size  does not change.


    I am runing right now a chkdsk /f on the computer, but I am a little bit lost there  ...



    But that is not outside the scope of WHS (unless you are saving files there directly, which is a REALLY bad idea).  What about in your torrent folder that is in D:\?  How much data is there at the moment?



    I do save in a d:\ folder, and right now there is nothing at all in this folder.
    The WHS just went back online, and it seems that the chkdsk on the d:\ drive did not help

    I will try to save more space on the different drives to check if demigrator works back or if the system will continue to eat more space :p
    • Edited by Atomusk Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:58 PM
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:44 PM
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    So after quite some cleanup (removing my computer backups, removing duplication of several shares), I now have 340GB free and the "system" share is now at 157GB.
    now nothing move and I don't know what to do to get theses 157GB of data back

    I have made a screencap with every info from the drives with treesize :

    http://www.nox-hosting.com/image.php?id=2A8B_48DBF745

    regards.
    • Edited by Atomusk Thursday, September 25, 2008 8:42 PM
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 8:41 PM
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    Just to continue the update, my "system" is now at around 50GB (and I did not touch anything), so I guess that Demigrator is now doing his job properly.

    I will update it a last time tomorrow but I guess it was a demigrator problem (and since the HDD was too full to do any work, he was not able to correct the probem after the reboot).

    Thanks for your help.
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 9:27 PM
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    Atomusk said:

    I have made a screencap with every info from the drives with treesize :
    http://www.nox-hosting.com/image.php?id=2A8B_48DBF745

    From you screen prints there seems to be a mismatch in the size of the backup folders:
    • Adding the sizes of \DE\Folders\{00008086-....} on all drives: 48+32+86=166 GB
    • The d:\folders is only 29 GBytes in size (matching the amount reported for backups on the console)

    Take the resulting size difference (137 GBytes), add the 20 Gbytes for the WHS system partition: 157 GBytes system space!
    Now it looks like there are some old backup files that WHS does not know about?

    Now in your next post you are reporting that the system size is now down to 50 GB. I can not explain that....
    Theo.

    No home server like Home Server
    Thursday, September 25, 2008 9:44 PM
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    Theo van Elsberg said:

    Atomusk said:

    I have made a screencap with every info from the drives with treesize :
    http://www.nox-hosting.com/image.php?id=2A8B_48DBF745

    From you screen prints there seems to be a mismatch in the size of the backup folders:
    • Adding the sizes of \DE\Folders\{00008086-....} on all drives: 48+32+86=166 GB
    • The d:\folders is only 29 GBytes in size (matching the amount reported for backups on the console)

    Take the resulting size difference (137 GBytes), add the 20 Gbytes for the WHS system partition: 157 GBytes system space!
    Now it looks like there are some old backup files that WHS does not know about?

    Now in your next post you are reporting that the system size is now down to 50 GB. I can not explain that....
    Theo.

    No home server like Home Server




    Theo, there's a few more figures that don't Add-up. In PP1 you can no longer use the folder sizes / free space / size on diks reported by windows explorer. Looking at these figures is NOT a good idea anymore.

    Just try adding-up all reported folder sizes on D partition and find that it's 915 GB. HUH? The whole disk is only 446 GB.  And at the bottom D it reports Free Space 168 GB. HUUHHHHH? I've bugged this behaviour long time ago on Connect. For what I know Partition Size (446 GB) and Free Space reported (168 GB) are correct.

    Other than that I DO think you're right something fishy is going on with his client backup database, this definitely makes you think something is not right. I would expect the size reported for D:\folders\{000* to be identical to the sum of all .\DE\folders\{000* folders. Normally I would advise Atomusk to delete all backups from the WHS console, Settings menu, then clean out alll {000* folders, then reconfigure and redo all backups.

    Since I didn't trust myself answering the OP and I didn't want Atomusk to run into major problems I asked the WHS team to jump in on this one (which they did in a matter of minutes!!). Right now primary problem seems to have been his disks were simply too full. I think this relates to the way DE migrator handles data in PP1: Drive Extender Not Migrating Data

    Since there still appear to be some issues I will ask WHS team to handle this problem with Atomusk one to one to avoid major confusion and further escalation of his problem, which in the end does not seem to be related to the update.

     

    Friday, September 26, 2008 4:16 AM
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    I see ... I have done multiple backup cleanup recently so it seems it does not correct this strange behavior.

    As an update, the state of the server did not change much during the night (threre was no backup done). Data seems well balanced between the different drives and I still have 52GB of data in the "system" share (and according to Disk Management add-in 1,3GB of shadow copy).
     
    I would be happy to provide more information to the WHS team if needed.

    Regards.
    Friday, September 26, 2008 5:31 AM
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    brubber said:

    Theo, there's a few more figures that don't Add-up. In PP1 you can no longer use the folder sizes / free space / size on diks reported by windows explorer. Looking at these figures is NOT a good idea anymore.




    Changed with PP1 seems to be the size reported on the tombstones in d:\shares. I think it now reports the sum of all server share sizes. Just ignore this when looking at the folder sizes and you are fine.



    No home server like Home Server
    Friday, September 26, 2008 7:28 AM
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    Atomusk said:

    I see ... I have done multiple backup cleanup recently so it seems it does not correct this strange behavior.

    As an update, the state of the server did not change much during the night (threre was no backup done). Data seems well balanced between the different drives and I still have 52GB of data in the "system" share (and according to Disk Management add-in 1,3GB of shadow copy).
     
    I would be happy to provide more information to the WHS team if needed.

    Regards.


    Hello,

    Can you file a bug for this issue on Connect in the feedback section? If you are not already part of the Windows Home Server program, you will have to join.

    Also, please include CAB files for the server. You will find a cheat sheet with instructions here: https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=8535

    Thanks!
    Lara Jones [MSFT] Windows Home Server Team
    Friday, September 26, 2008 3:49 PM
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    I have filled the bug in connect :

    https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=370204

    thanks

    Friday, September 26, 2008 7:41 PM