Title: unexplained "storage exceeded" Last modified: August 20, 2016 --- # unexplained "storage exceeded" * ResolvedModerator [Bet Hannon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bethannon1/) * (@bethannon1) * [13 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/) * I’m running a multisite install with about 40 sites. Today when I went to upload a new plugin, I got an error message that memory has been exceeded. * I know that I can uncheck the memory limit for uploads in network settings, but this is unexplained, and I’m concerned about where this large number of files came from. Currently, I have uploads limited to 150MB, and I definitely have not gotten this upload limit error message before. * When I go to the dashboard of the main site (which I haven’t been on for a while), it shows that I have exceeded that limit with 1,360.91MB uploaded. (This may explain my poor admin dash performance!) None of the other sub-sites are close to the 150MB limit. * This main site is small, and the total size of the uploads + blogs.dir files for this site is less than 20MB. * Should I be worried that I’ve been hacked? (A malware scan comes back with nothing.) * Any ideas about where those extra files could be found? Could there be some plugin creating files that are adding to this total? Any reason why such a large amount of files might need to be associated with the main site of the multisite? Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total) * Moderator [Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ipstenu/) * (@ipstenu) * 🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist * [13 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321101) * > When I go to the dashboard of the main site (which I haven’t been on for a > while), it shows that I have exceeded that limit with 1,360.91MB uploaded. ( > This may explain my poor admin dash performance!) None of the other sub-sites > are close to the 150MB limit. * That won’t impact your dashboard speed, but … that isn’t good. You need to go and inspect the filesize of wp-content/uploads (which is what your main site uses) * Moderator [Bet Hannon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bethannon1/) * (@bethannon1) * [13 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321106) * Media files only take up about 15MB, but the largest files within that directory is BackupBuddy backups at 1340MB. * I don’t remember the BUB zips causing this issue before — and it certainly would have immediately put me over the limit I set… But it certainly looks like that’s how it’s being counted on my other multisite also. I wonder if where the backups are stored changed with one of the recent updates? I’ll have to ask the BUB support guys. * In the meanwhile, I have gone to Network Admin–> edit site, and increased the Site Upload Space Quota to 8000MB for this site, which takes care of my immediate problem. (I never knew there were all those site-specific edit options until I searched for whether I can increase the quota on just one site! Pretty cool!) * Now I’ll have to blame my slow dashboard on something else! 🙂 * Thanks! * Moderator [Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ipstenu/) * (@ipstenu) * 🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist * [13 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321120) * Huh. That’s something to take up with the plugin guys for BackupBuddy, for sure. * [Sea Jay](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jcollier/) * (@jcollier) * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321193) * I believe this is related. After upgrading to 3.5.1, I started receiving this error in the Insert Media/Upload Files dialog box: * ``` Upload Limit Exceeded Sorry, you have used all of your storage quota of 10 MB. ``` * So I went to Network Settings and increased “Site upload space – Limit total size of files uploaded to 20 MB.” * Then, I went back to the post to upload files, and received this error: * ``` Upload Limit Exceeded Sorry, you have used all of your storage quota of 20 MB. ``` * I tried changing to 30 MB with same problem. Very strange. * Moderator [Bet Hannon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bethannon1/) * (@bethannon1) * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321194) * I didn’t know that I could edit each site’s upload quota in network–>edit sites until I ran into this issue. * As I wrote above, I increased the limit on the affected site to 8000MB, which solved the immediate problem. THEN, within a few days, mysteriously, its was back to showing me only having 15MB of files uploaded. * I don’t know what happened to either cause the problem or resolve it. * Moderator [Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ipstenu/) * (@ipstenu) * 🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321195) * Did you ask BackupBuddy? * Moderator [Bet Hannon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bethannon1/) * (@bethannon1) * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321196) * [@ipstenu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ipstenu/): Nope. It resolved before I got around to that. * Moderator [Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ipstenu/) * (@ipstenu) * 🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321197) * My guess would be those backups got somehow added into your space calculations. Or we magically fixed how WP does that in 3.5 🙂 * Moderator [Bet Hannon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bethannon1/) * (@bethannon1) * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321198) * I’m all for magic! 🙂 Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total) The topic ‘unexplained "storage exceeded"’ is closed to new replies. * In: [Networking WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/multisite/) * 9 replies * 3 participants * Last reply from: [Bet Hannon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bethannon1/) * Last activity: [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexplained-storage-exceeded/#post-3321198) * Status: resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics