Sep
25
WHS – Reclaim your diskspace
Filed Under Computers, Home Server, Projects
The other day while attempting to archive a virtual machine, I ran into an error with Windows Home Server. The system was reporting that I was “out of space” when trying to copy a 22gb file, even though I had over 1,600gb free.
My first instinct was to allow Windows Home Server to “balance” the drives. I had let the server run a few days in a row, but nothing happened. I had read a few posts stating that sometimes WHS needs a reboot to force balancing, so I gave that a try and also let it sit for a few more days, all with no luck.
My next idea was since I had more free space than used space, I would enable “folder duplication” on my archive folder, forcing it to put a copy on the other disks, and then disable it once it was done. The goal is that WHS would be smart enough to remove the file that was stored on the primary drive if possible as part of its algorithm. I was wrong, this was a huge waste of time.
Eventually I found two solutions that worked:
Option A: Copy a file, balance, repeat.
- Create a new folder in the root of D: (outside of anything managed by Drive Extender)
- Fill it up so that there is less than 10gb free on the volume
- Wait for the migrator to kick in and move content off of the volume
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the amount of space used by this dummy folder is about the size of your expected free space
- Delete the dummy folder
Option B: xcopy
- Log into your Windows Home Server with Remote Desktop and open a command prompt
- ‘xcopy’ a large folder that exists in one of your shares to a folder in the same share with a new name
- Delete original folder
- Rename new folder
- Repeat 2-4 as needed on other large folders in other shares.
As I had plenty of space free, I went with Option B. Not to mention that this solution was a lot less work for me.
Option B may not be for everyone. In my specific case, I knew I had all my files on the main drive. If you ran into this problem after already filling multiple drives, there is no guarentee that the files would be moved off the primary drive. In that case, Option A appears to be your only hope at this point in time.
Either way, at least there are a couple of options in order to free up space your primary drive if you are struggling with copying a file over the 20gb minimum that WHS keeps free by default.
I have attached a few screen shots of my attempts. The first is what my volumes looked like inititally. The second is after “balancing” (which was a failed attempt, and revered me back to picture 1). The final shot is after I tried the xcopy method. Victory!
