More ideas on freeing up space on a windows server boot partition

Recently I have been plagued with low disk space on the boot partition of my SBS2K3 server. I was confused why this was occurring since I thought I had this under control. When I found some spare time I started to re-examine the typical culprits(e.g. log files and temp files). I found some files but they were not big enough to cause the problem I was seeing. Since I needed about 1 Gig free space for some major upgrades, I decided to go ahead and move the SBSMonitoring database to another disk drive and delete old patch files. This almost got me to 1 Gb. I even decided to replace Acrobat with the lighter weight PDF reader, Foxit Reader.

Today I found the problem! I had previously set up Shadow copies to store the copies for all disk drives on my backup drive. While I was using JDiskReport to look at the disk space I noticed that there were three large directories in the System Volume information for the boot partition. After a little snooping I figured out my shadow copies were being stored on the boot partition and they were being duplicated. As an example, I was getting a copy at 7:00 and 7:02. I do not know how things got screwed up but I suspect it occurred during a power outage when the backup drive went offline before the server. Fixing it was easy. I deleted the existing shadow copies and changed the settings to point to my backup drive. To fix the scheduling problem, I went into the Tasks control panel and deleted the extra jobs.

I was thinking of getting rid of Java and JDiskReport until it lead me to the source of my problem. I probably will remove it but not right now. TreeSize Free is a free, lightweight alternative. The Professional version is even better. It was much easier to rationalize removing Acrobat from the server. For those interested in using Foxit Reader to replace Adobe Acrobat on your server, the link is listed below. Acrobat uses about 80 Mb of disk space when installed. Foxit uses about 2 Mb, launches much quicker than Acrobat, and does not need to be installed. I do not browse the Internet from the server but I do look at Trend Micro reports while logged as Administrator on the server.

Now with Foxit Reader 2.0, you don’t have to endure such pain any more. The following is a list of compelling advantages of Foxit Reader 2.0:

  • Incredibly small: The download size of Foxit Reader is only 1.5 M which is a fraction of Acrobat Reader 20 M size
  • Breezing-fast: When you run Foxit Reader, it launches instantly without any delay. You are not forced to view an annoying splash window displaying company logo, author names, etc.
  • Annotation tool: Have you ever wished to annotate (or comment on) a PDF document when you are reading it? Foxit Reader 2.0 allows you to draw graphics, highlight text, type text and make notes on a PDF document and then print out or save the annotated document.
  • Text converter: You may convert the whole PDF document into a simple text file.
  • High security and privacy: Foxit Reader highly respects the security and privacy of users and will never connect to Internet without users’ permission. While other PDF Reader often silently connects to the Internet in the background. Foxit PDF Reader does not contain any spyware or adware.

Source: Foxit Software
[tags]sbs[/tags]