Saving space on Windows xp and Server 2003

The following "how-to" covers Windows Server 2003 Standard and Server 2003 Small Business Server.

Most server rollouts for 2003 are showing their age and while we're waiting for longhorn, a cleanup of your hard disks may be in order. There are service pack, temp and logs that take up a lot of space. if you have multiple partitions like a 20gb partition for C (System) and a 200gb partition for D (Data) then there are some things you can do in under an hour to cleanup your system and increase the amount of free space. I could write the how-to down piece by piece but instead have compiled knowledge base articles and forum posts to help you in your path to a system with much more free space. In my experience, these tips can save about 10 gbs on a system partition.

Click "Full Story" for the entire bit.

Read More...

Relocating System Resources to save space:
1. Moving the SBS Monitoring Database will easily save 512mbs to 2000mbs off your system's drive. Microsoft has published a Word document download to assist you.

2. Moving Users' shared folders to another drive is also helpful. These folders are created in SBS when you create a new user and they are used to share files to other users. These folders by default, to not lock out other users and become a file dump for users and quickly gain in size.

3. Relocating the Exchange database can also be helpful and is pretty simple and save a lot of space. Imagine 15 users with a 512 megabyte Exchange mailbox and that gives you perspective on the issues that can arise by having Exchange's data on your system drive.

4. If you're using SBS's Shared Fax Client and users are actively using this, the sent faxes archive can grow large. You can relocate this to anywhere to save a few megabytes.

5. After Microsoft Updates and service packs are installed, Windows keeps a copy of that update in the Windows directory just in case you need to uninstall that update if problems arise. If you installed an update last year, then I think it's safe to remove that uninstall file.

6. Starting over with Microsoft Update and removing unnecessary log files and partial downloaded updates can save over 1gb of storage on your server.

7. A basic Windows cleanup task is to delete files in your temp directories and this can certainly save some space.

8. A speed tip and way to save a few percent on your drives is to perform a Disk defragmentation. If you need a how-to for this one then you shouldn't be administrating a server. If you have to ask, Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools. Do not run this during business hours. Begin defragmentation at midnight and followup with a restart of the server.

9. Delete cached user profiles from C:\Documents and Settings\. I suggest only logging into the server with one domain admin credentials but if John Smith used to be a domain admin and monitor backups but is no longer with you then you can shift+delete his profile from that folder without worry. Check his \Desktop and \Documents folders to make sure there's nothing in there you might want to keep.

10. Disk Cleanup is always an option but be careful. Setup Log files, Remote Desktop Files and Compress Old Files I would avoid. Those three won't cause problems but an admin wants to keep log files and RDP files and the compress old files option is not a good idea because it can significantly slow down your server's access to mailboxes, SQL databases and files (if this is a file server). Disk Cleanup is always a last option when cleaning up a server.

11. Relocate the server's swap file (Virtual memory). This will not only speed up a server that is using virtual memory but save space on your system drive.

12. Relocate the print spooler directory. In my experience, CAD documents and uncompressed images are a pain when it comes to printing. A 2gb cad document can quickly fill up a server with only 2gbs of free space when its time to spool a job to the plotter. Moving the swap file to the larger drive will help this issue.

13. A final tip is to never allow your server to get below 1gb of free space. Ideally, less than 15% free space is danger zone. A 100gb partition should never have less than 15 gbs of free space.


Now the links associated with each of these tips.

Tips 1-4. Microsoft TechNet document in Word format
Tip 5. Telus.net How-to
Tip 6. Cached copy of Allpostnews.co.uk
Tip 7. Deleting Temp folders
Tip 8. Self explanatory. If you want to setup your server to automatically defragment your disks, check out this site
Tip 9. Self Explanatory for the most part.
Tip 10. Techrepublic explains it best
Tip 11. A How-to can be found on O'Reilly's Windowsdevcenter
Tip 12. Moving the spooler was also found on TechRepublic

I hope you enjoyed the collection of links and tips and I also hope you're successful in these tasks. Do be careful while doing the items in tips 1-4. You can break your server with some of these and calling Microsoft is no day at the park. There's nothing worse than breaking exchange at 2AM and calling Microsoft to fix it.