Troubleshooting Full disk space
Last updated: August 11, 2026
By default, there are certain safety features provided by Redpanda to avoid your systems disk to fill to 100%, by utilizing certain disk space threshold settings that, once reached, will cause Redpanda to block clients from producing. In that state, Redpanda returns errors to external writers, but it still allows internal write traffic.
- Space Management (default: enabled)
- Ballest File (default: false)
Space management
If you are not utilizing tiered storage, it is recommended to set the space_management_enabled setting to "true". Otherwise it will not properly calculate the available disk space and redpanda will be under the impression that you have less disk space available then you actually do. If you run into a full disk, and you are not utilizing tiered or cloud storage, then disabling this will clear up some space.
Ballest File
By default, this is not utilized, but it is still important to check to see if this might have been setup when your Redpanda cluster was first created. This creates a file of a certain size that can be used as a "safety buffer" in case you reach disk full. You can then delete the Ballest file to free up that space.
For more details on Disk space, please take a look at the following link