Running out of disk space.

Peter wrote:

On a laptop it doesn’t matter because they get turned on only occasionally, usually. I have used SSDs on winXP laptops …. for ~13 years and none ever failed.

I also use SSDs on my PCs (1 W7, 2 W10) one of which runs continuously, and have seen no problems.

Having said that, I use Dropbox for everything I can’t download from the Internet, so if the SSD does crash and burn, I can be up and running again as soon as the Amazon Prime van is here.

Probably advisable to ditch the hard drive if it is a few years old, before it packs up.

They don’t build them like they used to (hard drives I mean ).

Fenland_Flyer wrote:

Michael_J I have not been able to install your suggestion as the Roles and Features does not have the requisite options.

Hmmm. I have a few Win 2008 R2 running and have not had any problems installing the “Desktop Experience” feature.

You can safely delete everything inside C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download.
Don’t touch C:\Windows\WinSxS – you can get some nasty problems and cause your whole system to become unusable.
Clean also C:\Windows\Temp (note that some files will remain as they are being used).
Use WinDirStat to get a good overview of which folders are the largest (I find it more intuitive than TreeSize which was recommended before) and if you can delete anything there.
If you have multiple users on the machine, see if any of them is storing a lot of files (e.g. on their desktops) or if they have a lot of temp files.
Run PatchCleaner to see if you can get rid of some of the installation files safely (this may clean up some of the WinSxS folder). I would recommend backing up your machine before you do that though.
And finally, buy a new bigger SSD, get Acronis TrueImage or similar software and clone your current disk to the new one. Or move to a virtual machine where you can increase the disk size much more easily.

More than likely, somebody has dumped a huge file somewhere, or you have a logfile which has grown to a massive size. This is a common problem on servers.

Open a command prompt (Start button and “cmd”) and type

cd \
dir *.log /s

If you get a huge listing, use

dir *.log /s /p

Repeat with *.jpg and other popular candidates If you are running a server to which people can upload pics, you will end up with loads of 10-20MB files. EuroGA has ~50GB of user uploaded objects now; the virtual server is 160GB, with the total filespace size being ~85GB.

If you have 20MB space left, it is prob100 that some processes are already not running.

You can delete the distribution folder but there are some gotchas. A google on

deleting windows software distribution folder

digs up a lot of stuff.

Did you install and run the Disk cleanup utility? It can remove old service packs etc.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/file-server/disk-cleanup

Indeed. I use SSDs on every machine I build nowadays. However I use only the “pro” grade – example.

However, does Windows Server 2008 support the special measures needed to not trash SSDs? SSDs on WinXP machines fail after 12 months of 24/7 operation, with an extremely high reliability You need win7 or higher for SSDs.

On a laptop it doesn’t matter because they get turned on only occassionally, usually. I have used SSDs on winXP laptops and tablets (for operating altitude reasons; HDs crash ~ FL130) for ~13 years and none ever failed.

Many progs out there for cloning drives. I tend to use an old copy of Trueimage v10.

Additionally, it is cheap and easy to clone to a bigger disk.

If you do, get an SSD, it improves performance fantastically, like having a new computer. My lappie went from unusably slow to nearly instant response.