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I rented a VPS / virtual machine with Windows Server 2008 with 16 GB of HDD.

The Windows install was fresh so I went on to install the automatic updates, patches etc. I soon found out that I now have 200 MB free as SP2 couldn't install reporting free space too low.

I've uninstalled all features and roles and every program and I am now at 400 MB free.

How can I go about finding out WHO is occupying my space and HOW / IF I can fix this?

Thanks :(

Later Edit 1 : Initially the hoster put up a Windows 2008 R2 VPS image which had MUCH more available space (I think 7 GB of the same 16 GB)... could it be that R2 uses much less space?

Andrei Rînea
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I think you're largely boned. We don't sell Windows 2008 VPSes with less than 20GB of space, since our base images (really, really base -- nothing in them we can easily remove) consume about 14GB of space before putting anything useful on the machine.

womble
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  • Well.. I can always upgrade to the next plan which is only 50% more money but one more core, 512MB more RAM and 16GB more HDD. However it seems like selling a car with 1/4 gallon tank. Nothing to do except buy-back.. – Andrei Rînea Nov 17 '09 at 16:35
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    +1 for "largely boned". A 2008 box with 16GB is near useless... – squillman Nov 17 '09 at 16:58
  • @Andrei: Yeah, I'd be a bit suspicious of a company that was willing to sell you a Win2k8 server with so little disk, but you have to take that with a grain of salt because I work in that business myself. Certainly I'd be asking them their opinion on the subject, though, to see what they have to say. – womble Nov 17 '09 at 17:06
  • I am really sorry I went to accept SomeName's answer but in a practical way it was the most useful. HOWEVER your answer is the eye opener and gives me strength to better negotiate my terms with the hoster. I wish I could have chosen yours too.. – Andrei Rînea Nov 17 '09 at 19:07
  • Well, you can always go and upvote two of my other answers at random or something... – womble Nov 17 '09 at 19:17
  • It has been done :) – Andrei Rînea Nov 17 '09 at 19:46
  • +1 16GB is nowhere near enough for 2k8, we require our clients to get at least 35GB for C: now I believe. – phoebus Nov 17 '09 at 23:29
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I don't have any specific advice, but if you want to see where the space has gone, try WinDirStat. It's the best tool I know of to visualize disk space.

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If you see any "Uninstall" directories in C:\Windows I'd say you could safely remove them and free up 100megs more or so...

djangofan
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  • I'll be doing a thorough analysis of the largest folders and their subfolders to see where the lump is. For now C:\WINDOWS occupies like 95% – Andrei Rînea Nov 17 '09 at 16:35
  • @djangofan: if you're referring to all the $NtUninstallxxx$ compressed folders that you're used to seeing in Server 2003, those don't exist any more as of Vista/2008. I think they may have been absorbed into the very confusing winsxs folder. – ThatGraemeGuy Nov 17 '09 at 18:11