Disk Quotas

How big is your Quota?

Best Practice (Litmus Test)

Professionals: Set Quota limits on their file servers' volumes

Amateurs: Allow a few users to hog the available disk space

Disk Quotas

Controlling use (abuse) of server disk space has been high on administrator's wish list for a long time.  Now with Disk Quotas you can implement best practice and limit users' disk space.

Disk usage conforms to the 'Pareto Principle'; 20% of your users will consume 80% of the disk space.  Configure disk quotas and make things fairer, stop one or two selfish users filling up the disk space unnecessarily.  One strategy is to set the limits high and use quotas to plant the idea that users should implement good housekeeping with their files.

To activate disk quotas: Right click the root of any partition and you will see the Disk Quota tab.

If you wanted to use disk quotas on separate folders investigate Mount Points.

Trap: Remember to check both boxes.

I have had several emails saying that Quotas are not working.  The reason was the administrator forgot to tick a box.   It does annoy me to think of the users ignoring your your limits, so seek out this box: 'Deny disk space to users exceeding quota limits'.

If you tick the two bottom boxes to Log events, then go to the Application log in the event log to check what is happening.

More Information. As an MCT trainer, I can thoroughly endorse TrainSignal because they deliver practical hands on training.  In particular, I like the way that TrainSignal cover all learning methods, instructor lead, video and of course text material.  You can either take one module, for example File Server or go for a combination of modules.  See more about Windows 2003 training here

On a related topic:

Encrypted File System (EFS)

Litmus test: Professionals show laptop users how to encrypt their files

There have been several high profile cases of lost laptops containing sensitive information.  Windows 2003 offers the facility to transparently encrypt sensitive folders.  So if the files get into the wrong hands, they will be very difficult to decrypt. 

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