Free''ing Up Physical Disk Space

  • Hi There, How would i go about free'ing up physical disk space for a DB on the storage drive. View SQL alert from MOM below :-"Name: SMS 2003 Site System Summarizer: Site System has less than 5% free physical disk spaceDescription: STRATE-SQL - SMS 2003 Site System Summarizer: Site System has less than 5% free physical disk space.SMS Site System STRATE-SQL has less than 5% free physical disk space on device E$."Thanks, Sonia

  • Check for the size of the databases. if u can shrink them do that so that u can get some space on the disk. Also check for the backup files size and thier retention properties and if u can reduce them do that also. wats the size of ur databases.

    Cheers,
    Sugeshkumar Rajendran
    SQL Server MVP
    http://sugeshkr.blogspot.com

  • According to the DB properties in questions is only 270MB in size.

  • you examine the contents of the disk drive to see what's on it. explorer view will give the overall stats, right click properties of folders to see which folder contains most files/space. Work backwards from there.

    [font="Comic Sans MS"]The GrumpyOldDBA[/font]
    www.grumpyolddba.co.uk
    http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/

  • Thanks

  • Usual culprits are as follows:

    1. Check recycle bin and empty it if you dont need to restore anything back.
    2. Shrink your database, not a good thing, but might be a last option, dbcc shrinkdatabase('db_name',% to be left), then run dbcc shrinkdatabase('db_name',truncateonly) to free up any space to the Os if the first shrink doesnt complete.
    3. Look out for any unused log files, eg leaving profiler on for too long creates some useless log files etc.

    Let us know how you get on.


    Kindest Regards,

    John Burchel (Trainee Developer)

  • Instead of using Shrinkdatabase you can use dbcc shrinkfile.

    This allows you to shrink specific files.

    First look in taskpad view in Enterprise Manager at your DBs and see if there are any files with large amounts of free space.

    Ideally you do not want to shrink DB files unnecessarily as this can cause fragmentation of the hard disks when the files grow.

    Therefore choose a target value which preserves some free space in the file(s) to be shrunk.

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply