SOLVED Low Disk Space message...

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Although not a specifically Win10 message the regularity with which the message appears since updating to Win10 is beginning to annoy me. My set up has a small allocation to a recovery drive for the PC, a relic from a prior setup. I could probably delete the partition and merge it with another but for now it doesn't use up much space and happy to leave it except... Every so often I get a system message that says I have low disc space on this drive (in fact no space at all) and I want to stop the message from appearing, I know it is low on disc space and don't need to be told every half hour. Any ideas how to stop it?

Also I do need to get into the depths of the OpSystem to start to understand privileges etc, are there any Quick Start guides around.
 
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Every so often I get a system message that says I have low disc space on this drive (in fact no space at all) and I want to stop the message from appearing, I know it is low on disc space and don't need to be told every half hour. Any ideas how to stop it?

lol This reminds me of Penny from the Big Bang Theory who ignored her Check Engine light saying, "It always does that" - until of course the engine stopped.

You need to free up disk space so Windows can operate properly. Then the light... errr popup message will go away.

30 days after Windows 10 was installed, you will no longer be able to roll back to your old version of Windows and the old Windows files will be deleted (or you will be prompted to delete them) and that will free up some space. Or you can run CCleaner now - if already installed. If you don't already have CCleaner installed you can run Windows own Disk Cleanup.

And if you are sure you won't want to uninstall Windows and don't need to wait out the 30 days, you can purge the uninstall files now with Windows Disk Cleanup. See After Windows 10 Installation - Cleanup.
 
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ok, should have made it clearer but thanks for the advice, well advised!

Unlike Penny and the Engine Light the partition I am discussing is not my main Windows partition and is only 20Gb in size and is allocated to drive E:. It is FULL (and therefore not E for Empty) with no spare space. It was a drive that existed in my original (small) SSD, created by Fujitsu as a system restore device. It has been copied over to 2 new (bigger) SSDs, the first giving up the ghost after less than 12 months and replaced under warranty and the second because I found 250Gb was just TOO small. For some reason it made it over to my current 1Tb SSD when I was copying over the old disc byte by byte using TrueImage. I really don't think it serves any purpose now that I have several backups in various places of both the system discs (C: and my data (D: drives. [Although now I think about it having upgraded to Win10 I don't have a system backup, yet].

I just want to get rid of this pesky message as it really doesn't serve any purpose. How do I fool the system into not checking for space on this one drive - or alerting me to the lack of space on this one drive. As for space on the 2 other partitions, well there was over 100Gb on my C drive and 600Gb on my D drive prior to a recent backup of my phone which has consumes some of the C Drive space.

I don't think I am running out of space on the real drives, yet.
 
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I don't think I am running out of space on the real drives, yet.
You need to verify that because I don't see why Windows would be yelling at you unless it was a system disk Windows needed.

You can run Speccy and it will tell you how much free space you have on each drive.
 
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The windows disc has well over 60Gb free, my data drive has 680Gb free and this small partition is 0% free. It is the small partition that it keeps complaining about, not the Windows disc hence the frustration with the message.
 
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Since you have so much free on the data disk, create a folder on it called DriveE and copy everything from Drive E to the new folder on Drive D. Then delete everything off Drive E. The message should go away.
 
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My guess is something is trying to write to that partition. When it can't it's giving you that message. You don't have a page file writing to that partition?
 
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I'll check but I don't think so. Given the size of the D and that it's an SSD I use the D for as many of the scratch discs or page files as I can.
 
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Given the size of the D and that it's an SSD I use the D for as many of the scratch discs or page files as I can.
Well, just for the record, SSDs are ideally suited for page files.

But regardless, either Windows, or something that starts with Windows is using this drive for something.
 
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Thanks, everybody, for your time, so far.
OK, checked Device Manager (after finding how to get to it).
  1. There are no messages in any of the message logs that correspond to the messages that the system is showing on disc space. That is looking at the Event Viewer, Windows Logs and Applicatins and Services Logs.
  2. Quotas are not setup for the specific drive I am referring to (or any of the others for that matter).
  3. Files are NOT indexed on this device.
  4. The disc is NOT shared and NOT password protected.
However, I would add that when I look at the properties in the Device Manager for this drive and the Events tab I have the following 3 entries:-
Date/Time - Device Not Migrated
Date/Time - Device configured (disk.inf)
Date/Time - Device started (disk)

with the following in the information window for the first (ie last actual) message and Date/Time is the time when I upgraded to Win10.

Device SCSI\Disk&Ven_Samsung&Prod_SSD_850_EVO_1TB\4&a0286b9&0&000000 could not be migrated.

Last Device Instance Id: IDE\DISKSAMSUNG_SSD_850_EVO_1TB_________________EMT01B6Q\5&1BA104AA&0&0.0.0
Class Guid: {4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Location Path:
Migration Rank: 0xF000FC00FFFFF120
Present: true
Status: 0xC0000719


I'm not sure whether this is important or not. Otherwise the disc seems to be working perfectly. Are there any specific SSD related settings required by Win10 (or vice-versa)?

I do not see any references in any of the "control panel" screens to scratch discs or location thereof. From memory these were controllable from the Control Panel in Win7. Any suggestions where they might be or did I just miss them?

'Storage' on the 'System' panel does not seem to provide means to change scratch discs - this is where I would expect it to be. Or is there a switch/permission that needs to be set? and if so where is it?


 
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I do not see any references in any of the "control panel" screens to scratch discs or location thereof.
No, you wouldn't there.

Right click on Computer and select Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced, then in the Performance section, click Settings... > Advanced, then under Virtual memory click on Change... .

Hopefully "Automatically manage paging files size for all drives" is checked. Preferably, you want "System Managed" shown only on your boot drive, and/or another drive with lots of free space.
 
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Well, Automatically manage for all drives is not checked but C: was the only system managed drive. Have left automatically manage unchecked as I don't want system to even think about the E: but have both C: & D: now 'system managed'
 
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Have left automatically manage unchecked as I don't want system to even think about the E:
It won't.

Since there is no PF on E, then you must have a program that starts with Windows that, for some reason, is pointing to E drive.
 
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Hey Tim,

I had the same issue, and found this forum: http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1264602-windows-10-disable-the-low-disk-space-warning/

It seems to have worked for me.

A lot of people don't understand that some of us just have many extra storage drives that are exactly just that; storage. First they tell you to delete your files so that Windows can utilize the space. Windows isn't touching this drive unless I tell it to write to it.

In my scenario I have a separate HDD that Windows 10 writes a backup file to every week. It's set to write until full capacity then delete older backups, so guess what? IT'S ALWAYS FULL!

The notifications were a pain in the ass, but I haven't seen one in 24 hours (knocks on wood).
 
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Hey Tim,

I had the same issue, and found this forum: http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1264602-windows-10-disable-the-low-disk-space-warning/

It seems to have worked for me.

A lot of people don't understand that some of us just have many extra storage drives that are exactly just that; storage. First they tell you to delete your files so that Windows can utilize the space. Windows isn't touching this drive unless I tell it to write to it.

In my scenario I have a separate HDD that Windows 10 writes a backup file to every week. It's set to write until full capacity then delete older backups, so guess what? IT'S ALWAYS FULL!

The notifications were a pain in the ass, but I haven't seen one in 24 hours (knocks on wood).

Thanks for that, looks like it is exactly what I am after. Now just need to understand the method. Given the dates on this other thread I'm not sure why the answer didn't come up when I Googled for the problem. When I get it working I will post the answer back to this thread in case there are others out there on this forum looking for the same solution. Now how do I login as Administrator (I already have Admin privileges).
 
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Hey Tim,

I had the same issue, and found this forum: http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1264602-windows-10-disable-the-low-disk-space-warning/

It seems to have worked for me.

A lot of people don't understand that some of us just have many extra storage drives that are exactly just that; storage. First they tell you to delete your files so that Windows can utilize the space. Windows isn't touching this drive unless I tell it to write to it.

In my scenario I have a separate HDD that Windows 10 writes a backup file to every week. It's set to write until full capacity then delete older backups, so guess what? IT'S ALWAYS FULL!

The notifications were a pain in the ass, but I haven't seen one in 24 hours (knocks on wood).

Thanks PhilxBefore, seems to have solved the issues, now.

Had problems doing what the thread above suggested but after a few G-Searches managed to pin it down. For others with this problem the final instructions are:-
_____________________________________________________
assuming that you have never run the 'hidden' Administrator account since upgrading to Win10.
Tap Windows Key and type "cmd"
right click on the "Command Prompt" in the menu and select "Run as Administrator".
You should now be in a DOS box.
Enter the command
net user
which should list all available users on the system, one of which is the Administrator account.

Then type
net user Administrator /ACTIVE:YES
and then password protect this using
net user Administrator *
and entering and re-entering a password at the prompts.

This account should now be password protected. Obviously try to make this password as secure as possible as this account is the main Administrator account for the computer and has ALL privileges and will now appear on the logon screen list of users. If you think it is necessary it is possible to hide this account when you are finished by re-entering the DOS box and typing:-
net user Administrator /ACTIVE:NO
but do remember the password in case you need to go back into the hive!

Now log-off the system and log back on with the Administrator account. If for any reason the account does not appear on the list of users at log-on re-do the above instructions and ensure that you have not misspelled or used the wrong case in the above commands and have another go. It may be necessary to reboot the system prior to continuing, I did for safety's sake and found that I had used the "=" sign rather than the colon and the Administrator did not appear.

Now run regedit (Windows key, type "regedit", right-click, select run as administrator) as for Command prompt.
Within regedit find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\Gather (HKLM\....\Gather).
Right click on Gather, select permissions, click on Advanced Button, click on Change.

Top line in the dialog-box should read Owner: TrustedInstaller.
In the dialog-box below enter "Administrator", note that this is case sensitive and should be the same as the username in the CMD box at the beginning of the instructions, now press OK and ADD.
On first line (Principal:) click on "Select a principal", enter "Administrator" in the text box then press OK and click on checkbox "Full Control" then OK.

Hit Apply then OK, highlight Administrator in "Group or Username" table and it should show full access for HKLU Key "Gatherer", then click OK.

Having set the permissions for the user Administrator double click on key LowDiskMinimumMBytes and set the value to hex 0 pressing "Enter" afterwards.

This should stop the messages about running out of space on any drive that is not the system disc. It seems to have worked for me, so far, with an E: drive that was 100% full and only 15Gb in size that was a Fujitsu portable backup drive that theoretically would allow me to rebuild a hard drive to original specs. Whilst I have kept this drive I have, so far, never needed to use it and I probably could get rid of it, however, I haven't.

It may be necessary to do the same as above with "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\Gathering Manager" which is the next key to HKLM\...\Gather modifying BackOffLowDiskThresholdMB to hex 0 but as mentioned I have not seen a message, so far.

Having changed the key(s) it is necessary to change the ownership of the 2 keys "Gather" (and "Gathering Manager") back to TrustedInstaller.

To do this:-
Whilst still in Regedit right-click "Gather", click on Advanced button, click "change" and in the box type "NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller" and hit OK. NB there IS a space between the NT and the SERVICE. You should see ownership change back to TrustedInstaller, then OK in Advanced Settings dialog box. At the same time make sure that only TrustedInstaller has access to full privileges for all keys that have been changed.

You will need to restart to ensure the new settings are retained.
_______________________________________________________________________________________

I think that about wraps up the solution to the problem I was having. Thanks to PhilxBefore who put me on the right track (refer link in his post) and the authors of this post, DeusProto and GrandMaster (who had the same problem I did at about the same time) together with tenforums.com and askvg.com who solved the problems of finding the Administration account and reinstating the TrustedInstaller ownership, respectively.

Hopefully this is now officially solved.
Tim Barker.
 
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Tim,

Thanks for posting these instructions. I followed them, but it didn't work for me. I am still getting low disk space warnings.

PS. For those of you who advise just "cleaning up"/making extra space on the disk, know that I have disks I use solely for data storage. They are at capacity, I know they are at capacity, and that's perfectly fine because they are just for storage. I don't need Windows to constantly remind me they are full.
 

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