Hello,

My DFS seems to be running correctly on the 3 servers. However, on some of the larger folders (100GB+), there are a very large number of files in the deleted/conflicted folder in the DFSPrivate folder.

Should this be concerning? Can I simply go in there and clear out that folder without harming anything?

Hi,

Files in Conflictanddeleted folder will be deleted automatically so you do not need to manually delete them, and the folder will grow up again after a clear.

By default there are high and low watermarks (60% and 90%) and once it over the 90% of the allowed size, files inside will be deleted.

More information please see Conflict and Deleted folders part in following article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc782648(v=WS.10).aspx

Thanks for the info.

the issue is that as these conflicted/deleted folders grow, it is chewing up space on my disks as well as the backup media.

is there a way to manually delete these instead of waiting for the auto purge to take place?

Hi,

Go to DFS management - Replication - <DFS replication group> - Memberships tab, right click on 1 folder and choose Properties- go to Advanced tab and you will see the size settings. Change it to a proper size. 

If there is any issue occurs you can refer to this article for manually clear the folder:

Manually Clearing the ConflictAndDeleted Folder in DFSR

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2008/10/06/manually-clearing-the-conflictanddeleted-folder-in-dfsr.aspx

Hi Shaon,

Thanks for the reply. I reviewed the link and proceed with the procedure in the article.

The command does clear out the conflicted/deleted folders successfully, however, if I delete a file in the parent folder (test.doc) it will then go into the conflicted/deleted folder again.

Is this by design?

Deleting the file does remove it from the folders on the other DFS servers though.

Ok, i see what is going on with files being moved into the conflicted/deleted folder.

I have the box checked under the Advanced tab as shown in the link. This makes sense as to why the conflicted/deleted folder grows. Is it recommended to have this box checked on unchecked?

:

Hi,

Actually it is recommended as sometimes a required file may be deleted due to replication. In this situation at least deleted data is not immediately removed and we can still recover them from this folder.