Windows Server 2012 C Drive appears to be running out of space

Question

I know there are plenty of posts regarding this problem, but ours is slightly different. We are running VMWare and our Windows Server 2012 is on a data store. We were around 75 GB. We ran out of space and added about 20 GB, so we were around 95 GB. That extra space ran out in a matter of days. We just added another 25 GB and watched as we lost about half a GB every 12 hours. We are now down to 1.58 GB free after a few days. We are running a single app on this server, but it doesn't look like our problem is that something is using the space, it looks like Windows Server 2012 is miscalculating. When I check WinDirStat, it says that the C Drive is 30.6 GB and it says that WinSXS is taking up 70.8%, but it's only 16.8 GB in size, so that is all wrong.

Does anyone have any ideas of what we can do to show the actual amount of free space we truly have?

Answer 1

I think you're going to need to narrow down a) where is the space being consumed, b) what files are being created.

These tools might help to that end.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/diskmon
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

might also try from a clean boot.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

--please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

Answer 2

it looks like Windows Server 2012 is miscalculating

How did you come to this conclusion?

That extra space ran out in a matter of days

Where are you checking?

Answer 3

I am looking at File Explorer and it shows we are losing space quickly. Then we ran WinDirStat and it shows the same thing, but the drive is 120 GB. In WinDirStat, it shows the C drive is 30.6 GB. WinDirStat shows the largest folder under it is Windows and shows it is 23.7 GB and it 77.6% of the entire drive. So, we have 2 separate programs showing different results, but the one thing in common they have is that they are shwoing we are almost totally out of space. The weird thing is that when we added the additional storage a few days ago, we lost about a half a GB each 12 hours.

Answer 4

Disk monitor ran through 61419 #'s. Process Monitor is still growing, but currently is showing over 12,000,000 of 13,000,000 events (90%). Those numbers are still growing.

Answer 5

You're going to need to narrow down a) where is the space being consumed, b) what files are being created.

also try from a clean boot.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

--please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--