Managing Disk Quotas for Individual Users

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Scripting Guide

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When you enable disk quotas on a volume and specify a quota, every user who stores data on that volume is automatically limited to the amount of disk space specified by the quota. For example, suppose you set a quota of 50 MB. As soon as users save their first bit of data to the volume, they are automatically assigned a quota of 50 MB. If you have users who require more (or less) than 50 MB of disk space, you can create individual quota entries for those users.

Determining Quota Limits

Disk quotas are based on the files and folders owned by a user. When determining disk quotas, consider the following factors:

• Disk quotas are based on file ownership. If a user modifies a file owned by another user, the disk space allocated for that file is charged to the file owner. This will typically be the user who initially created the file. However, some applications change the file owner based on the last person to modify the file. If a file is owned by User A and then modified by User B, some applications transfer ownership to User B. In that case, disk space is charged to User B.
• Disk quotas are based on the uncompressed size of a file. Compressing a file does not change the amount of disk space charged to the file owner.
• When disk quotas are enforced, the quotas change the amount of volume free space reported to a user. For example, suppose a user has been given a quota of 1 gigabyte (GB) on a volume that has 50 GB of free space. When the user checks free space on the volume, it reports only 1 GB minus whatever disk space is already used. The user does not know that there are actually 50 GB of free space available on the volume.
• By default, administrators have an unlimited amount of disk space on a volume. When you enable disk quotas, the Administrators group is automatically added to the quota table and given unlimited disk space. Do not change this default. If you remove the Administrators group or limit the disk space allocated to this group, you might limit the ability of administrators to manage the system.

Note

• The Administrators group owns all files created by any administrator.

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