Storage & disk space

Where your disk is going, and how to get some back. Worth a look once a month.

Sidebar → Server & Health → Storage

Why this matters more than it sounds

A full disk does not announce itself. What happens instead:

• Photos and documents stop uploading, often with no clear error
• Backups stop being created — and nobody notices until one is needed
• Logs stop writing, so the reason for the failure is not recorded either

By the time anyone reports a problem, the trail of what went wrong is missing.

What the page shows

Breakdown	Tells you
By module	Which feature is using the space — student photos, certificates, study material
By file type	Images vs PDFs vs everything else
By database table	Which tables have grown
System folders	Logs, backups, temporary files
Largest files	The 25 biggest single files

The figures are a saved snapshot, not live

Measuring a large media tree is slow, so the page shows the last scan rather than recalculating every time you open it. Press Rescan now for fresh figures, or let the scheduled scan keep them current.

A scan can come back partial

Scanning stops after about 45 seconds so it never hangs the page. On a very large installation you may be told the results are partial — run it again, or at a quieter time, for the full picture.

Cloud storage figures are approximate

If your media is on S3, R2 or Wasabi there is nothing local to measure. The page tallies the objects instead and marks the result as approximate. Use your storage provider's own dashboard for exact numbers and billing.

Getting space back safely

Three cleanup actions, and all three only remove things the system can recreate:

Action	Removes	Risk
Clear temp	Scratch files left over from imports and exports	None
Prune logs	Rotated log files past their retention	None — recent logs are kept
Clear compiled cache	Cached data and compiled page templates	None — regenerates automatically

Nothing here touches a school's photos, documents or records.

Clearing the compiled cache is also a fix

If the panel behaves oddly after an update — old wording, a page that will not refresh — clearing the compiled cache is usually the cure, not just a space saver.

The orphan finder

Over years, files get left behind: a student is deleted but their photo remains, an import fails halfway, a certificate is regenerated and the old one stays.

The orphan finder lists files that no longer belong to any record. It is report-first — it shows you the list and deletes nothing on its own. You then pick which files to remove.

Look before you delete

Orphan detection is a very good guess, not a certainty. Take a backup before a bulk delete, and skim the list rather than selecting everything blindly.

Deleted files are gone. There is no recycle bin.

What actually grows

In rough order, on a typical installation:

1. Student and staff photos — every enrolment adds more, forever
2. Generated PDFs — receipts, marksheets, certificates and ID cards accumulate
3. Backups — the largest single folder on many servers
4. Study material — whatever teachers upload, and they upload big files
5. Logs — slowly, unless something is erroring repeatedly

Backups are usually the quickest win

Lower keep days on the backup schedule, and download old backups off the server before deleting them. That is normally more space than every cleanup action combined.

Running low

In the order I would try them:

1. Lower backup retention, after downloading what you want to keep
2. Clear temp and prune logs
3. Review orphans
4. Check the largest-files list for something that should not be there
5. Move media to cloud storage, or buy more disk

Common questions

How often should I check? Monthly, and before any bulk import.

Can I delete files directly on the server? You can, but you may break records that point at them. Use the orphan finder instead.

Why is a database table so large? Usually logs or audit history. Both are pruned automatically on a schedule.

The numbers look wrong. Press Rescan now — you are looking at an old snapshot.