Adventures in Computing: Zero Free Disk Space

      Ever wonder what happens when you completely run out of disk space? I found out one day. Was a bit of a nuisance, but no harm done (at least as far as I can tell).

      From my observations, people using computers generally fall into two camps. Those who will never use up their disk space, and those that will use all that is available. I fall firmly into the later.

      Many people use a negligibly amount of disk space. While their usage gradually increases, it’s not a significant thing. That odd attachment downloaded, but forgotten about. The picture they saved without realizing it. This is the type of person that primarily uses their computer for internet connection, and nothing more.

      Then there are those that actually use disk space. A variety of potential reasons here. Could be they take lots of pictures, perhaps while traveling. Or make videos of the grandkids, grandmothers love their grandchildren. Not to mention the myriad professional reasons. Which is what got me.

Running Out

      I normally have ~150GB free space. That number fluctuates, but that is the general target. Gives me some buffer if something comes up that needs the space, while also allowing me to store much stuff.

      Which is where things went wrong. For a variety of reasons free space was low, and I was rapidly using it up without noticing. In addition to my normal usage, I had a few projects going on that were temporarily using a good chunk of space.

      Hadn’t given free space any thought, because that’s why I maintained the buffer. Which is when I received a notice about disk space below low. Checked, and yes it was (I want to say 3GB, but I can be wrong on that exact number).

      So I had a bit of a panic. Emptied the Recycle Bin as a quick way to gain space, so I could finish a project. Doing that let me delete that projects temporary files, thus permanently freeing more space. On to the next project, etc. And somewhere in that process, I noticed the free space indicator actually said “0 bytes free”.

      Not something I had seen on a hard drive before. CD/DVD’s, sure, all the time. But never a hard drive. Even if I do suspect Windows wasn’t being entirely honest.

Fallout

      Had a number of programs act oddly, but once there was enough space, closing and restarting them took care of those issues. In the end only had one real problem: VirtualBox broke.

      The configuration file ran out of space part way through (or some such), and left the Virtual Machine in an unusable state. And as I use VirtualBox all the time (including to post this), that was a problem. This is where I would say ‘luckily I was able to fix it’, except it wasn’t luck.

      While this particular error wasn’t expected, an eventual ‘crisis’ was. So I keep backups. In this case, I restored the Virtual Machine from backup. Might have lost some minor tweaks since the backup was made, but probably not. Once I get them configured the way I want them, I tend not to change the Virtual Machines much. Just plugged in the backup, copied the files over, and was back up and running.

      Which may be the most important lesson of this Adventure: Make (and Maintain) good backups.