Troubleshoot full disks and disk resizing Stay organized with collections Save and categorize content based on your preferences.
This page describes common issues that you might run into when resizing apersistent disk or when your persistent disk is full, and how to fix each ofthem.
Before you begin
- Alwayscreate a snapshot of your disk before performing any troubleshooting steps to ensure that your data is backed up.
- If you haven't already, set upauthentication. Authentication verifies your identity for access to Google Cloud services and APIs. To run code or samples from a local development environment, you can authenticate to Compute Engine by selecting one of the following options:
Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:
Console
When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.
gcloud
Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation,initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command:
gcloudinit
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by runninggcloud components update.- Set a default region and zone.
REST
To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.
Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation,initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command:
gcloudinit
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by runninggcloud components update.For more information, seeAuthenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.
Rate limited error when modifying a disk
The following are common errors you might encounter when you attempt tomodify your Extreme Persistent Disk or Google Cloud Hyperdisk. You might see theseerrors appear in a number of places, such as in your serial console output orin application logs.
Disk cannot be resized due to being rate limited.
Cannot update provisioned iops due to being rate limited.
Cannot update provisioned throughput due to being rate limited.
Review the following time limits for modifying disks:
- You can resize an Extreme Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Throughputvolume only once in a 6 hour period.
- You can resize a Hyperdisk Extreme volume only once in a 4hour period.
- You can change the provisioned IOPS or throughput for aHyperdisk volume only once in a 4 hour period.
To resolve these errors, wait the required amount of time since your lastmodification before attempting to modify the disks again.
Disk capacity errors
Full disks
The following are common errors you might encounter when your persistent diskreaches full capacity. You might see these errors appear in a number of places,such as in your serial console output or in application logs.
No space left on device
Not enough storage is available to process this command
To resolve this issue, do the following:
Create a snapshotof the disk.
Delete files that you don't need on the disk to free up space.
If your disk requires more space after this,resize the disk.
Inaccessible VM due to full boot disk
Your VM might become inaccessible if its boot disk is full. This scenario can bedifficult to identify; it's not always obvious when the VM connectivity issueis due to a full boot disk. The following are examples of common errors youmight encounter if you cannot access your VM from the Google Cloud CLI becausethe boot disk is full:
Network error: Software caused connection abort
ERROR: (gcloud.compute.ssh) Could not SSH into the instance. It is possible that your SSH key has not propagated to the instance yet. Try running this command again. If you still cannot connect, verify that the firewall and instance are set to accept ssh traffic.
You cannot connect to the VM instance because of an unexpected error. Wait a few moments and then try again.
No space left on device
ERROR Exception calling the response handler. [Errno 2] No usable temporary directory found in ['/tmp', '/var/tmp', '/usr/tmp', '/']...
To resolve the above issues, do the following:
Confirm that the VM's SSH failure is due to a full boot disk:
gcloud compute instances tail-serial-port-outputVM_NAME
If the boot disk is full, the resulting output will contain the message
Nospace left on device.If you have not already done so,create a snapshotof the VM's boot disk.
Try torestart the VM.
If you still can't access the VM, do the following:
Stop the VM:
gcloud compute instances stopVM_NAME
Replace
VM_NAMEwith the name of your VM.Increase the size of the boot disk:
gcloud compute disks resizeBOOT_DISK_NAME --sizeDISK_SIZE
Replace the following:
BOOT_DISK_NAME: the name of your VM's bootdiskDISK_SIZE: the new larger size, ingigabytes, for the boot disk
For example, to resize a disk named
example-disk-1to 6GB, runthe following command:gcloud compute disks resize example-disk-1 --size=6GB
Start the VM:
gcloud compute instances startVM_NAME
Reattempt toSSH to the VM.If you still can't access the VM, do one of the following:
Create a new disk from a snapshot. For more information, seeRecovering an inaccessible VM or a full boot disk.
Boot the VM temporarily in rescue mode, using open sourceGCE Rescue tool and perform the steps available inFile system issues.
File system issues
File system resize
After you resize a VM boot disk, most VMs resize the root file system andrestart the VM. However, for some VM images types, you might have to resize thefile system manually. If your VM does not support automatic root filesystem resizing, or if you've resized a data (non-boot) persistent disk, youmust manuallyresize the file system and partitions.
To check if your root file system expanded automatically after you resized yourVM boot disk, do the following:
Check if your VM resized the boot disk using one of the following methods:
Inspect your serial port output.Look for a line that indicates the root partition was resized.
For example, on VMs with Debian images, if the automatic resize wassuccessful then the console logs include the line
... expand-root.sh[..]: Resizing ext4 filesystem on /dev/sda1.If you can connect to a Linux VM using SSH, run the command
df -htocheck if there is free disk space.For example, this output shows that the root file system is 92%full:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted onudev 63G 0 63G 0% /devtmpfs 13G 1.4M 13G 1% /run/dev/sda1 339G 315G 24G 92% /
If your VM didn't resize the root file system, manuallyresize the filesystem and partitions.
Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) limitation
When using Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), you can't increase capacity byresizing underlying persistent disks. If you resize disks at the hardwarelevel, S2D won't recognize the added space, and data might become inaccessible. To increase capacity,add servers or drives instead of resizing existing persistent disks.
To check if the disk is configured as part of an S2D cluster or storage pool, complete the following steps:
In the Google Cloud console, go to theVM instances page.
Next to the instance that has the resized disk, click theRDP button. The browser opens an RDP connection to the instance.
Right-click theWindows Start button and selectDisk Management to open theDisk Management tool.For example, the following screenshot shows that Disk 1 has a Storage Spaces protective partition in place:

Alternatively, you can run either of the following PowerShell commands to find any Persistent Disk that are associated with a S2D configuration.
Get-Disk | Where-Object Model -eq "Storage Space"
Get-PhysicalDisk | Where-Object {$_.ObjectId -like "*Spaces*"}Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under theCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under theApache 2.0 License. For details, see theGoogle Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-12-15 UTC.