On Windows disk quota setting method

Imagine how long your server's hard drive could hold if anyone could occupy the server's hard disk space. Therefore, it is very important to limit and manage the hard disk space that users use, whether it is file service, FTP service or e-mail service, it requires limited control of the disk capacity used by users to avoid misuse of resources. Disk Quotas in Windows 2003 (diskette Quotas) enable this functionality to be implemented simply and efficiently, and it has an "original" advantage over other quota software.

Disk quota functionality

Disk quotas are the amount of disk space that administrators can use for each user in this domain, that is, only disk space within the maximum quota range can be used by each user. Disk quotas monitor the use of individual user volumes, so that each user's use of disk space does not affect the disk quotas of other users on the same volume. Disk quotas have the following characteristics:

* Disk quotas are only supported on the NTFS file system, and disk quotas are managed in volumes, and this functionality must be available on NTFS-formatted volumes. However, only the NTFS file system of the Windows 2000/XP/2003 operating system can support disk quotas, and you cannot set disk quotas on NTFS partitions on Windows NT 4.0.

* Disk quotas can track and control the disk usage of each user. This trace is implemented using the ownership of a file or folder. When a user copies or stores a new file on an NTFS partition, he has ownership of the file, and the disk quota program will count the size of the file into the user's disk quota space.

* Disk quotas do not support file compression, and when the disk quota program counts disk usage, it is unified by the size of the uncompressed file, regardless of how much disk space it actually occupies. This is mainly because the different types of file types have different compression ratios when using file compression, and the size of two files of the same size may be different after compression.

* When disk quotas are set, the remaining space in the partition's report is actually the amount of space left in the current user's disk quota range.

* Disk quota programs are independently tracked and controlled for each partition, regardless of whether they reside on the same physical disk.

* The operating system can monitor disk quotas, scan disk partitions, monitor the use of disk space by each user, and identify users with different colors for disk usage over alarm and quota limits, which facilitates management of disk quotas.

* Multiple users who log on to the same computer do not interfere with the capabilities of other users; one or more users do not monopolize disk space on the public server; In a shared folder for personal computers, users do not use too much disk space.

To sum up, you can see that disk quotas provide a user-and partition-based file storage management, making it easy for administrators to use this tool to properly allocate storage resources to avoid system crashes due to runaway disk space use, thereby increasing the security of the system.

Disk quota Management

The management of disk quotas mainly includes the two aspects of enabling disk quotas and specifying disk quotas for specific users, which are now described separately.

1. Enable disk quotas

Enable disk quotas to prevent users from further using disk space or to log user usage when they exceed the disk space specified by the administrator.

1th step If you have created a volume for NTFS, you can display the Disk Properties dialog box shown in Figure 1 by right-clicking the volume on which you want to enable disk quotas in Windows Explorer, and selecting the Properties menu item from the shortcut menu.

Figure 1 The Disk Properties dialog box

Step 2nd Click the Quota tab and switch to the Quota tab as shown in Figure 2. Select the Enable quota management check box. The check boxes below will become available, with the "Deny disk space to users exceeding quota limit" option, and users with disk space exceeding the quota limit will receive a "Low disk space" message from windows and are not removed and moved from You cannot write additional data to a volume without moving an existing file. If you clear this check box, users can exceed their quota limit and use disk space indefinitely.

Figure 2 "Quotas" tab