C Drive running out of space on WIndows Server 2016

[M_Lyons10]

Hello everyone,

 

About a month ago I purchased a Windows Server 2016 Essentials box and set it up based on Dell's recommended settings (allowing 60 GB for the C Drive, etc.).

 

I've since installed SQL Server and ONLY SQL Server (aside from the obvious Windows updates of course) and I have 1.8 GB of free space left...

 

I don't see how that's even possible.  I checked to see if there was a Windows.old folder created during one of the updates and can't find one anywhere.  I've run disk cleanup and that didn't reclaim anything of any consequense... 

 

Is this a normal amount of space for Windows Server 2016 Essentials to take up?  Are Dell's recommendations that far off?  It seems like a LOT of space to me.

 

Is there a way to safely repartition the C Drive to give Windows some more space?  How much space does Windows Server 2016 need?

 

I appreciate everyone's help and insight here.  I've never worked with Windows Server 2016 before, and while I so far really like it, this storage thing is really unmanageable to me.

 

Thanks Again!

[Nick H. Supervisor]

According to this page you need about 32GB of space for the OS (note that it also mentions you will need more space if you have over 16GB RAM). As for the SQL Server, it seems to depend on which components you installed. So it doesn't seem unreasonable that a 60GB C drive starts noticing the space disappearing quickly.

 

I've not really managed such a server from the ground up before, so I can't really help about how much space should be enough space. Generally I would sit down and figure out what I needed to be on the C drive and go from there.

[techbeck]

SQL log files can take up a lot of space on a server as well as IIS log files.   I would also install and run a program like the following which will tell you what folders have the most space taken.

 

https://windirstat.net/

[M_Lyons10]

Thanks everyone.  I will definitely check that program out Techbeck and really appreciate the recommendation as well.

 

I first noticed the space issue a couple of weeks ago and upon restarting today the data on the drive drammatically reduced.  I'm not sure why that persisted through multiple restarts but not this one, but I'm thinking they were windows updates taking up all that space.  Either way, I'm probably going to have to get myself some more space just in case it fills up with updates (or backups) again.

 

Thanks again everyone!

[conna]

Is your "ServerFolders" location also on the c : drive?  Client backups and all the default shared folders will take up space there.

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

I've always preferred Steffen Gerlach's Scanner ( http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ ) to quickly analyze what storage is being used.