Understanding Windows
2000 Disk Quotas
Windows 2000 disk quotas
allow administrators to
O
ne major shortcoming of classic Windows NT is its inability to manage the
amount of disk space allotted to individual users. Numerous third party
tools are available, of course, but they don't come cheap, and neither have
they silenced administrators from calling for an integrated disk quota utility which
assign and control hard drive
can be managed on an enterprise wide basis. In Windows 2000, Microsoft has
space, charging users only
attempted to address that situation in the shape of its own quota management
service.
for the files they own.
However, Windows 2000 quotas are only available from volumes that have been
formatted with the NTFS file system. If the volume is not Windows 2000 NTFS
By Dave Cook
formatted, or if the user is not a member of the Administrators group on the local
IT Journalist
computer, the Quota tab will not be displayed on the volume's Properties page.
Assuming both of these conditions apply, it is a fairly straightforward task for
administrators to enable the feature and enforce different quota limits for different
users. With quotas enabled, administrators can set warning levels and hard thresh
olds, as well as write log events whenever users reach these points.
Although quotas are typically used to control the disk space used on the network,
quotas can also be used on a local computer. For example, if a local computer is
shared by three users the administrator of the local computer can allocate a fixed
amount of disk space to each user. As users near their limits they will receive a
warning from the operating system, but should they go over their limits the
operating system will prevent them from using any further disk space. Note that
the built in Administrator group is exempt from quotas by default.
Quota Gotchas
One major drawback to Windows 2000 quotas is that, while administrators can
enforce limits on a per user and per volume basis, they cannot issue quotas for
individual network shares or folders. So if the quota is set to, say, 100 MB and the
volume has three shares, users will be restricted to storing only 100 MB across the
three shares and not 100 MB per share.
Be aware also that quota statistics are not affected by file compression. Thus, if a
user is limited to 50 MB of disk space, then that user can store only 50 MB worth of
files, even if the files are compressed and actually only occupy 30 MB of disk space.
Equally, if a user has a 50 MB disk quota that contains 45 MB of data, the amount
of free space cannot be increased simply by compressing the data.
Useful Sites
Ownership of files is another contentious issue, since file ownership is altered
Home of Quota Advisor, a
whenever a file is moved. While a user who is not the file owner can safely move
third party quota management
files to another location, those files should not be copied, otherwise that user will
solution.
www.wquinn.com
become the new owner of the files. Administrators particularly need to watch out
for this little gotcha, since they can easily become the new owner of a file if, for
Home of Quota Server,
example, they were to restore the file from backup tape to a location other than the
alternative quota management
original directory.
solution.
Because quotas are maintained by the file system, and not the Registry, quotas will
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follow the disk if it is moved. If, however, the disk is moved to a computer running
classic Windows NT (or if the computer is a dual boot machine), then quotas will
Home of PowerExpert ST,
not work. In addition, administrators looking to impose domain wide quotas on
another disk quota utility.
users need to be aware that while quotas may be imported or exported between
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computers, the feature will work only between machines in the same domain.
Issue 135:October 2001
PC Network Advisor
File: T1729.1
page 15
Tutorial:Windows
www.pcnetworkadvisor.com
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