PRTG Manual: WMI Free Disk Space (Multi Disk) Sensor
The WMI Free Disk Space (Multi Disk) sensor monitors the free disk space of one or more drives via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).
The sensor can show the following:
- Free disk space in percent and bytes for each disk
- Disk space of a system in total
The sensor monitors logical partitions of a hard or fixed disk drive. PRTG identifies logical disks by their drive letter, such as C.
- Dutch: WMI Vrije Schijfruimte (Multi Schijf)
- French: Capacité du disque WMI (plusieurs fois)
- German: WMI Laufwerkskapazität (mehrf.)
- Japanese: WMI ディスク空き領域(複数ドライブ)
- Portuguese: Espaço livre em disco da WMI (vários discos)
- Russian: Свободное дисковое пространство WMI (на нескольких дисках)
- Simplified Chinese: WMI 磁盘可用空间 (多个磁盘)
- Spanish: WMI disco libre (discos múltiples)
- Sensors that use the WMI protocol have a high impact on system performance. Try to stay below 200 WMI sensors per probe. Above this number, consider using multiple remote probes for load balancing.
- This sensor requires credentials for Windows systems in the settings of the parent device.
- This sensor requires WoW64 (Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit) for target systems that run Windows Server 2016.
- This sensor supports the IPv6 protocol.
- This sensor has a high performance impact.
You cannot add this sensor to the hosted probe of a PRTG hosted by Paessler instance. If you want to use this sensor, add it to a remote probe device.
The Add Sensor dialog appears when you manually add a new sensor to a device. It only shows the setting fields that are required for creating the sensor. Therefore, you do not see all setting fields in this dialog. You can change (nearly) all settings in the sensor's Settings tab later.
The following settings in the Add Sensor dialog differ in comparison to the sensor's Settings tab.
WMI Disk Free Configuration
Setting |
Description |
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Drive |
Select the drives that you want to monitor from the dropdown list. We recommend that you use the default value. You can select All to monitor all available drives, or you can select one specific drive letter to monitor a single drive only. The dropdown list might also contain drive letters that do not exist on your device.
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Click the Settings tab of a sensor to change its settings.
Usually, a sensor connects to the IP Address or DNS Name of the parent device on which you created the sensor. See the device settings for details. For some sensors, you can explicitly define the monitoring target in the sensor settings. See below for details on available settings.
Setting |
Description |
---|---|
Sensor Name |
Enter a meaningful name to identify the sensor. By default, PRTG shows this name in the device tree, as well as in alarms, logs, notifications, reports, maps, libraries, and tickets.
|
Parent Tags |
Shows tags that the sensor inherits from its parent device, parent group, and parent probe. This setting is shown for your information only and cannot be changed here. |
Tags |
Enter one or more tags. Confirm each tag with the Spacebar key, a comma, or the Enter key. You can use tags to group objects and use tag-filtered views later on. Tags are not case-sensitive. Tags are automatically inherited.
The sensor has the following default tags that are automatically predefined in the sensor's settings when you add the sensor:
|
Priority |
Select a priority for the sensor. This setting determines the position of the sensor in lists. The highest priority is at the top of a list. Choose from the lowest priority ( |
Setting |
Description |
---|---|
Drive |
Shows the drives that this sensor monitors. This is either All or a specific drive letter. Once you have created the sensor, you cannot change this value. It is shown for reference purposes only. If you need to change this value, add the sensor anew. |
Set Limits Checked for ALL Disks
In this section, you can set limits that are valid for all channels and all drives. By entering limits, you can define when the sensor shows the Warning or the Down status, depending on the data provided by all drives that this sensor monitors. If you want to individually define limits for separate channels, use the limit settings in the channel settings.
All limits that you define here are valid in addition to the limits defined in the particular Channel settings. The limits are valid simultaneously, so the first limit that is breached applies.
Setting |
Description |
---|---|
Percentage Limit Check |
Enable or disable a limit check for the free space in percentage channels of all drives. By default, percentage limits are enabled with lower warning and lower error limit. Choose between:
|
Upper Error Limit |
This setting is only visible if you enable Use the limits of both the sensor and the channel settings above. Specify an upper limit in percent for a Down status. If the free disk space of one of your drives exceeds this percent value, the sensor changes to a Down status. Enter an integer value or leave the field empty.
|
Upper Warning Limit |
This setting is only visible if you enable Use the limits of both the sensor and the channel settings above. Specify an upper limit in percent for a Warning status. If the free disk space of one of your drives exceeds this percent value, the sensor changes to a Warning status. Enter an integer value or leave the field empty.
|
Lower Warning Limit |
This setting is only visible if you enable Use the limits of both the sensor and the channel settings above. Specify a lower limit in percent for a Warning status. If the free disk space of one of your drives falls below this percent value, the sensor changes to a Warning status. Enter an integer value or leave the field empty.
|
Lower Error Limit |
This setting is only visible if you enable Use the limits of both the sensor and the channel settings above. Specify a lower limit in percent for a Down status. If the free disk space of one of your drives falls below this percent value, the sensor changes to a Down status. Enter an integer value or leave the field empty.
|
Size Limit Check |
Enable or disable a limit check for the free bytes channels of all drives:
By default, byte size limits are not enabled for drives. |
Upper Error Limit |
This setting is only visible if you enable Use the limits of both the sensor and the channel settings above. Specify an upper limit. Use the same unit as shown by the free bytes channels of this sensor (by default this is MB). If the free disk space of one of your drives exceeds this bytes value, the sensor changes to a Down status. Enter an integer value or leave the field empty.
|
Upper Warning Limit |
This setting is only visible if you enable Use the limits of both the sensor and the channel settings above. Specify an upper limit. Use the same unit as shown by the free bytes channels of this sensor (by default this is MB). If the free disk space of one of your drives exceeds this bytes value, the sensor changes to a Warning status. Enter an integer value or leave the field empty.
|
Lower Warning Limit |
This setting is only visible if you enable Use the limits of both the sensor and the channel settings above. Specify a lower limit. Use the same unit as shown by the free bytes channels of this sensor (by default this is MB). If the free disk space of one of your drives falls below this bytes value, the sensor changes to a Warning status. Enter an integer value or leave the field empty.
|
Lower Error Limit |
This setting is only visible if you enable Use the limits of both the sensor and the channel settings above. Specify a lower limit. Use the same unit as shown by the free bytes channels of this sensor (by default this is MB). If the free disk space of one of your drives falls below this bytes value, the sensor changes to a Down status. Enter an integer value or leave the field empty.
|
Alarm on Missing/Removed Disk |
If a monitored disk is removed or not found, values are set to zero. Select the alarm approach in this case:
|
Setting |
Description |
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Result Handling |
Define what PRTG does with the sensor result:
|
Setting |
Description |
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Primary Channel |
Select a channel from the list to define it as the primary channel. In the device tree, the last value of the primary channel is always displayed below the sensor's name. The available options depend on what channels are available for this sensor.
|
Graph Type |
Define how different channels are shown for this sensor:
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Stack Unit |
This setting is only visible if you enable Stack channels on top of each other as Graph Type. Select a unit from the list. All channels with this unit are stacked on top of each other. By default, you cannot exclude single channels from stacking if they use the selected unit. However, there is an advanced procedure to do so. |
By default, all of the following settings are inherited from objects that are higher in the hierarchy. You should change them centrally in the root group settings if necessary. To change a setting for this object only, click under the corresponding setting name to disable the inheritance. You then see the options described below.
For more information, see section Inheritance of Settings.
Click to interrupt the inheritance.
Setting |
Description |
---|---|
Scanning Interval |
Select a scanning interval from the dropdown list. The scanning interval determines the amount of time that the sensor waits between two scans. Choose from:
|
If a Sensor Query Fails |
Select the number of scanning intervals that the sensor has time to reach and to check a device again if a sensor query fails. Depending on the option that you select, the sensor can try to reach and to check a device again several times before the sensor shows the Down status. This can avoid false alarms if the monitored device only has temporary issues. For previous scanning intervals with failed requests, the sensor shows the Warning status. Choose from:
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Schedules, Dependencies, and Maintenance Window
You cannot interrupt the inheritance for schedules, dependencies, and maintenance windows. The corresponding settings from the parent objects are always active. However, you can define additional schedules, dependencies, and maintenance windows. They are active at the same time as the parent objects' settings.
Setting |
Description |
---|---|
Schedule |
Select a schedule from the list. You can use schedules to monitor during a certain time span (days or hours) every week. Choose from:
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Maintenance Window |
Select if you want to set up a one-time maintenance window. During a maintenance window, monitoring stops for the selected object and all child objects. They show the Paused status instead. Choose between:
|
Maintenance Begins |
This setting is only visible if you enable Set up a one-time maintenance window above. Use the date time picker to enter the start date and time of the one-time maintenance window. |
Maintenance Ends |
This setting is only visible if you enable Set up a one-time maintenance window above. Use the date time picker to enter the end date and time of the one-time maintenance window. |
Dependency Type |
Select a dependency type. You can use dependencies to pause monitoring for an object depending on the status of a different object. You can choose from:
|
Dependency |
This setting is only visible if you enable Select a sensor above. Click |
Dependency Delay (Sec.) |
This setting is only visible if you enable Select a sensor above. Define a time span in seconds for the dependency delay. After the master sensor for this dependency returns to the Up status, PRTG additionally delays the monitoring of the dependent objects by the time span you define. This can prevent false alarms, for example, after a server restart or to give systems more time for all services to start. Enter an integer value.
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Click to interrupt the inheritance.
Setting |
Description |
---|---|
User Group Access |
Define the user groups that have access to the sensor. You see a table with user groups and group access rights. The table contains all user groups in your setup. For each user group, you can choose from the following group access rights:
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Click to interrupt the inheritance.
Setting |
Description |
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Channel Unit Types |
For each type of channel, select the unit in which PRTG displays the data. If you define this setting on probe, group, or device level, these settings can be inherited to all sensors underneath. You can set units for the following channel types (if available):
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KNOWLEDGE BASE
My WMI sensors don't work. What can I do?
For more information about sensor settings, see the following sections: