Need HiveMind advice, Windows Server 16 update, not enough space

[Brad Johnson]

Trying to run a Windows update on our security camera server. Machine is less than a year old with a straight-up new install if Windows Server 16. Dell rack system.

We're trying to run Windows update and it comes up with the message "Not enough space to run the update. Go to your drive and free up space" Not exact, but close enough. The OS drive is a mere 60 GB. with about 6GB free.The OS and a single client for the security camera service is all that's running, and all that has ever run. Nothing else. Nada.

Question 1) Is there an extra special unknown-to-mortal-man trick that will let me process the update without any undue gyrations?

Question 2) If question 1 is non-viable, Is there a way to force Windows to process the update through the 500 GB (and completely un-populated) second drive?

Question 3)  Where the $%#!! did they come up with a 60GB drive to begin with!!?? I can barely get a thumb drive that small these days. Is that some kind of a server thing? If it is, it needs to stop.

Brad

[lee n. field]

Install and run windirstat.  Find out what's taking up all the room.  If you're lucky something's cluttering up c:\windows\temp and not cleaning up after itself.

60GB boot drive?  Not partition, drive?   I don't even know what would be that small, any more.  <boggle>.

[Ben]

I can't remember anymore for sure, but don't newer win versions have an option somewhere to use an external or other drive as swap space for updates?

[Calumus]

At this point a 120gb ssd runs about $30. It might be worthwhile.  Other than that, have you run disk clean up and included system files and all but the most recent restore points? There could be a decent amount of space to free up there.  How much ram does the system have?  The page file could be taking up a decent chunk of that little drive too if Windows is managing it.

[lee n. field]

Trying to run a Windows update on our security camera server. Machine is less than a year old with a straight-up new install if Windows Server 16. Dell rack system.

We're trying to run Windows update and it comes up with the message "Not enough space to run the update. Go to your drive and free up space" Not exact, but close enough. The OS drive is a mere 60 GB. with about 6GB free.The OS and a single client for the security camera service is all that's running, and all that has ever run. Nothing else. Nada.

Question 1) Is there an extra special unknown-to-mortal-man trick that will let me process the update without any undue gyrations?

Question 2) If question 1 is non-viable, Is there a way to force Windows to process the update through the 500 GB (and completely un-populated) second drive?

Question 3)  Where the $%#!! did they come up with a 60GB drive to begin with!!?? I can barely get a thumb drive that small these days. Is that some kind of a server thing? If it is, it needs to stop.

Brad

BTW, if it's really one physical drive or RAID volume partitioned oddly, and not 2 physical drives, gparted can resize.  You'll be offline while it's happening.

[Brad Johnson]

I was wrong on two points...

First, it's Win Server 12.

Seconds, two physical drives, 600 GB each in RAID 10. Partitioned as follows:
500 MB (EFI system)
100 MB (OEM)
3 GB (Recovery)
60 GB (Boot, drive C: designation, NTFS)
494 GB (data, drive E: designation, NTFS)

It will let me dynamically shrink and expand the E: partition at will. It won't let me expand the C: partition even though I have 60 GB of unallocated space (created by shrinking the E: partition)

Brad

[lee n. field]

You have to move the resized e: back, to make room for resizing c:.  Can't (AFAIK) do it live, have to use a third party utility.

[Phantom Warrior]

Ditto what lee n. field about having to move E: over with gparted to resize C: drive.  I've run into that before and don't know of any tricks to get around it live either.  The good news is that gparted makes that an easy fix.  You'll have to boot into the gparted environment and you'll be down for several hours to a day while it does its thing.   But once it's done you are good to go.

[Brad Johnson]

More info...

This is a server for our security camera/DVR system. Whomever set it up installed the video control client (Victor Systems) on the boot partition rather than the data partition. It was only a matter of time before we hit the proverbial wall. I was able to find some unnecessary temp files and delete them. With that I was able to at least process the update and get us back up and running.

I sent a (tactful and diplomatic) nastygram to the company who ordered and installed it. Turns out the company who makes the systems (Victor) did the software install. They must have had a junior assistant on the software configuration line the day our install was processed.

Brad

[Phantom Warrior]

I was rereading this and noticed you mentioned the 500 GB partition is unpopulated.  What exactly do you mean by that?  If it is completely empty or there is nothing on there you care about you could delete it and add the unallocated space to your C: drive.  Pretty much solving your space issues for all time.  Of course that will erase any data on the partition.  If that's a problem you're back to the original suggestion of using something like gparted.

[Brad Johnson]

I was rereading this and noticed you mentioned the 500 GB partition is unpopulated.  What exactly do you mean by that?  If it is completely empty or there is nothing on there you care about you could delete it and add the unallocated space to your C: drive.  Pretty much solving your space issues for all time.  Of course that will erase any data on the partition.  If that's a problem you're back to the original suggestion of using something like gparted.

It's completely unpopulated. Sitting there doing nothing.

A complete rehash is what's currently being discussed... blow everything away, repartition the volume, and reinstall from the OS up.

Brad

[Firethorn]

Can you uninstall the client and reinstall it?

Or even just move it over, adjust any shortcuts and registry keys to it?

[Brad Johnson]

I suggested that first shot out of the box. Equip providers wants to go straight to the Nuke It From Orbit. Being handled under warranty so I'm no pushing my argument very hard.

Brad

[lee n. field]

I suggested that first shot out of the box. Equip providers wants to go straight to the Nuke It From Orbit. Being handled under warranty so I'm no pushing my argument very hard.

Brad

Sounds good to me.  If it were mine, and the second, empty partition is in fact not used for anything, I'd try the nuke d: resize c: thing first.