XADM: Explanation for System Reporting Disk Full When Free Space Exists (271062)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server
This article was previously published under Q271062

SYMPTOMS

Microsoft Windows 2000 reports your drive has run out of disk space but you cannot tell where the space is being used.

CAUSE

When Exchange 2000 submits a message to a large distribution list (DLs), the DL must be expanded to determine which recipients to send the message to. When a DL is expanded, Exchange 2000 must keep track of the state of each recipient on that DL (non-delivery reports (NDR), Delivery Receipts (DR) and so on). For that, Exchange 2000 keeps all the information in the P1, the header and property portion of the e-mail file. Exchange 2000 stores 1 KB of information for each recipient. So, if you send a message to 500 recipients, then you have a file size of 500 KB generated for that P1.

On a busy system with numerous e-mail messages being sent to large DLs, it is possible for you to end up with many megabytes or even gigabytes of data in the P1s. You can end up with a disk full of error messages even though when you look in Windows Explorer, it says you have space free. If a disk full report is generated on a drive that has Exchange 2000 databases on it, you might notice that the Exchange service will stop.

If the Exchange service stops on the drive that has the Exchange 2000 databases on it, the information store service stops. To remedy this situation, you must move some databases to a drive that has space available. For additional information about moving databases, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

257184 XADM: How to Move Exchange Databases and Logs in Exchange 2000 Server

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server.

MORE INFORMATION

This behavior occurs because Windows only returns the size of the default data stream in the directory query. There are a number of other sizes associated with the file that are hidden on this query, including the non-default data streams (used for properties), attributes, object IDs, and so on. P1 information and size is hidden and not returned through the user interface.
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:4/25/2005
Keywords:kbbug kbpending KB271062
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