You've exceeded storage limits or would like to reduce storage usage Print

Problem Description

• You've run out of or are running low on storage space.
• You may not have changed anything on your site, yet many things still happen with your site that can take up space like automated backups adding to the file size, emails slowly eating up space, mass comments taking up more database size, or even log files growing a bit faster than usual.
• You have received an email notification that resources for one of your domains have been exceeded. This could be referring to disk space or bandwidth. Example: "The 'domain.com' subscription, owned by user 'My Name', is approaching or already exceeded the resource usage limits." If the notification is referring to bandwidth limits, you'll need to upgrade your account - follow the steps under Solution #2 below. If the notification is referring to disk space usage, try Solution #1 first, then proceed to Solution #2 if that doesn't solve the problem for you.

If you do not resolve the overage using one or more of the options below within 8 days of first notifications of overage, we may suspend your account or delete older backups automatically in order to free up space due to your lack of action.

If you have a VPS with Plesk admin access, this guide will better help identify disk space usage using a VPS and guide you through resolving it.

Problem Resolution

The simplest way to resolve this is to upgrade your hosting plan. If you're on a VPS, use the second half of that guide to increase your VPS configuration; there you'll find storage space options.

If you do not wish to upgrade, then you'll need to follow the steps below to determine what is taking up space and remove it, if possible.

How to find what is taking up space in Plesk

To see a breakdown of storage usage in Plesk:

1. Start by logging in to Plesk
2. Navigate to to the "Statistics" menu option to get a breakdown of bandwidth and storage
3. Consult the pie chart entitled "Disk space" to get an idea of what is using storage. It will break it down into Mail, Logs, Web (website), and Backups (which refers to Plesk backups, but not 1-click web apps backups)
4. Take note of the button in the upper left corner called "Refresh usage stats" - after you have removed some items, be sure to come back here and press that button to see your updated usage. This will tell you if you need to remove more items.

If Plesk says most storage is used by Mail

Use our guide to managing mail quota to see which account is using the storage and ultimately reduce your mail account usage.

If Plesk says most storage is used by Web

After you remove files using the steps below, be sure to use the refresh usage stats button in Plesk (described above). Any changes you make to files/emails/logs/etc will take 24 hours to reflect space usage in our Client Centre. There are some folders and files within your user root that are a fixed part of the account and cannot be removed. This is akin to the system files on your computer, phone or tablet which cannot be removed, but still take a small piece out of your overall storage. Please do not remove files/folders unless you're certain you don't need them.

Check 1-click web apps and WordPress Media Library

• Web App Backups: check for backups within 1-click web apps that you may not need by going to "Websites & Domains" in the Plesk menu, then choosing 1-click web apps, followed by the Backups tab. You may remove any older backups you don't require. Going forward, to avoid using storage within your hosting, you can configure your web app backups to store the backup data in cloud services like Dropbox or Amazon S3.
• Large Website Files:  If your site uses WordPress or another CMS like Joomla or Magento, consider removing old media from their Media managers provided within the admin panel for the app. If your site is purely HTML, you can use the Plesk File Manager to remove larger files.

Check Files Manually using Plesk File Manager

You can use the Plesk File Manager to learn which folders/files are taking up the most space.

Select all folders then choose More > Calculate Size and it will update the "Size" column values for each folder and file within. Then skim down the list until you see a large folder (ex: greater than 1-2GB), open it and repeat the preceeding steps to calculate the size of those folders. Repeat until you find where the big files are. You can then opt to save them to your computer and delete them if you don't think they're required for the operation of your site.

Empty the trash: If you delete files and folder using Plesk File Manager, it will put them in a folder at the root called .trash - open this folder and choose the empty option to erase them permanently. Until you do that they will still count towards total storage usage.

If you can't find files to remove you can simply upgrade your account for more storage - see below for info on this option.

Check Files Manually using Plesk Disk Space Viewer

If available on your server, you can alternatively use the disk space usage viewer to learn what is taking up the most space. Log in to Plesk and choose any domain in the list (it won't matter which - it will still display usage for all). Select the "Plesk Apps" tab and then Diskspace Usage. In the path at the top click on your primary domain. It will now show a breakdown of each website's web root folder with their storage usage. This is the same as what you would be doing with the Plesk File Manager in the paragraph above.

Check Log File Sizes

For logs, files up to 20-30MB is normal, however you may find error logs filling up fast if your web app (like WordPress) is outputting errors or warnings. To examine the log files for the domain, complete these steps:

1. Log in to Plesk
2. Look for the domain with the exceeded storage limit and click the "See More" button at the bottom of its bounding box
3. Click on the "Logs" icon.
4. In the upper right corner where it says "All logs", click the arrow on the right, then choose "Manage Log Files".

Take a look at the Size column on the right to find larger than normal log files. Download all abnormally large files (> 5-10MB) to see if there are any recurring errors being logged as a large log file may indicate an error with your website or one of its plugins. If you spot any such errors, search Google for the parts of the error that don't include IPs or your domain to see if there's a solution to fixing the error then repair it to prevent it from being a problem again.

Once you've done this, select any particular large files by checking the box on the left and click the Remove button to clear up their space. Repeat for each domain in Plesk.

If you see more than 10 of each type of log file then it is suggested to limit the total number of files that are held by Plesk. This will prevent this problem from occurring in the future. To do this, choose the "Log Rotation" button at the top of the Logs screen. Set the maximum number of log files to 10 and click OK.

Additional ways to gain more storage or reduce storage

There are many solutions still available to help reduce your server-side storage and the best options will depend on where the majority of your current storage usage lies. Here's a few great options:

1. Move to your own VPS where your storage is configurable up to 200GB
2. Move large or all media files to Amazon S3. Here's an example of how to do this with a WordPress Plugin
3. Migrate your email to a dedicated email hosting service.
4. Configure Plesk to back up your site to a cloud storage solution and disabling local backup plugins like BackupBuddy