Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

disk quota

Synopsis

A method of managing the amount of disk space that users can utilize.

Description

New to Windows 2000 Server is the capability of allocating disk space to users in the form of disk quotas. Disk quotas are only available on NTFS partitions and volumes, not those formatted with FAT or FAT32.

Disk quotas can be configured in a number of ways:

• Warnings can be issued when a user is nearing the configured quota limit.

• Quota limits can be either enforced (hard limit) or not (soft limit). If enforced, users who exceed their limits will be denied access.

• An entry can be logged in the event log when a warning is issued, when a limit is exceeded, or both.

Disk quota limits are based on file ownership and not on where the files are located on a quota-enabled NTFS volume; that is, they are established on a per-user basis. For example, if a user moves a file from one folder to another on the volume, he still shows the same amount of disk space used in My Computer or Windows Explorer. If a user takes ownership of a file on an NTFS volume, the file is charged against the user’s quota.

In addition, disk quotas apply to specific volumes only and not to folders within volumes—that is, on a per-volume basis. If a physical disk has several volumes or partitions (or if you have multiple physical disks), each partition or volume may have quotas either enabled or disabled, and those on which quotas are enabled may have different quota limits set (unless it’s a spanned volume).

Types of ...