Fix “Drives are running out of free space” Error in SharePoint Health Analyzer

Problem:

SharePoint Health Analyzer in Central Admin site gave the alert banner, “The SharePoint Health Analyzer has detected some critical issues that require your attention. View these issues”. On checking, I foundĀ “Drives are running out of free space” and “Drivers are at risk of running out of disk space” errors logged!

SharePoint Health Analyzer detected an error - Drives are running out of free space

Also, this found an error message in the Windows event log with an Event ID: 2138
The SharePoint Health Analyzer detected a condition requiring your attention. Drives are at risk of running out of free space. Available drive space is less than five times the value of physical memory. This is dangerous because it does not provide enough room for a full memory dump with continued operation. It also could cause problems with the Virtual Memory swap file: New Volume (SharePoint-Server- C:\). Examine the failing servers and delete old logs or free space on the drives. For more information about this rule, see “https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=142688”.

Root cause: By default, SharePoint needs at least 2 * RAM size of free disk space on C:\ of your SharePoint servers. E.g., If you have 16 GB of RAM in your server, then SharePoint checks if you have 80 GB of free space in your system drive. If you don’t, then SharePoint logs an Error in the health analyzer. If you don’t have a 5xRAM Size, then SharePoint logs a Warning.

Solution:

How do I fix this issue? Well, you have to increase the disk space on your C:\ to 5 x RAM Size (or remove old files, cleanup Logs, etc.). In General, If you have enough free space, This alert can be ignored.

You can also disable this rule in the Health analyzer to get rid of the alert. To disable this rule, follow the below steps:

  1. Go to SharePoint 2013 Central admin site
  2. Click on Monitoring from the left navigation
  3. Under “Health Analyzer”, click on “Review rule definitions”
  4. Under the Availability category, click on the “Drives are running out of free space” rule.
  5. In the view page, click on “Edit Item” and then uncheck the “Enabled” checkbox.
  6. Hit the “Save” button to commit your changes.
    sharepoint Drives are running out of free space

Salaudeen Rajack

Salaudeen Rajack - Information Technology Expert with Two-decades of hands-on experience, specializing in SharePoint, PowerShell, Microsoft 365, and related products. He has held various positions including SharePoint Architect, Administrator, Developer and consultant, has helped many organizations to implement and optimize SharePoint solutions. Known for his deep technical expertise, He's passionate about sharing the knowledge and insights to help others, through the real-world articles!

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