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Keep getting "Insufficient disk space to continue indexing" message

Anonymous
2014-11-24T18:41:22+00:00

I've been having this problem for a couple of months now - I keep getting incomplete search results when searching e-mails, and every time this occurs, I check the Indexing Options and it tells me that it has "Insufficient disk space to continue indexing".  I currently have 827GB free on my HD.  I've tried rebuilding the index several times, which usually fixes it for a day or two, before I get the same message again.  I also tried creating a new directory on the same drive called "Index" and pointing Windows to that location instead of the default.

I do have a large e-mail archive in Outlook, which makes my total index around 280,000 items, but I don't think that should matter as long as I have adequate disk space.

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit with Microsoft Office 2013 (Office 365).

Anyone have any ideas?  Thanks in advance.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-05-12T21:14:18+00:00

    I have found that the registry entry DWord:BackOffLowDiskThresholdMB at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\Gathering Manager will cause this error. By default the value is 600 [at least on Windows 8.1 and 10].

    I reduced this value to 100 and immediately the problem went away. To change this value you have to right-click on the key (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\Gathering Manager) and select Permissions and then Advanced and then change Owner from TrustedInstaller to Administrators. Then you can select OK and get back to the security tab and there give Administrators Full Control. Then change the value to 100 decimal (or whatever you want small than 600 decimal). Stop and restart the Windows Search service and it should create a complete index.

    I don't know why with apparently so much space you would have an issue. You could use ProcMon to see at what location SearchIndexer.exe is finding .edb files (these are the search index database files). Then see if that location has enough space. Possibly there is some quota on the space you can use in that location, it is being redirected to another volume with less space or something like these options.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-02-14T00:05:24+00:00

    Hi,

    Have you tried creating a new folder in a diffrent partition and then pointing Windows to that location?

    If the issue persists, I would suggest you to run the built-in 'Search and indexing' troubleshooter and let us know the results.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-02-05T22:07:58+00:00

    I'm still having this problem and it's been quite the nuisance.  Anybody?

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