Overflow E-mail Due to Full Disk Space
	What's New in IT IT Consulting Phones/VoIP Internet Security About Us Home

	Web Site Hosting	Web Design	Broadband/Access	E-Mail Solutions	Accept Credit Cards	Hosting Support

If you do not routinely access your POP e-mail account, unwanted or unneeded e-mail messages can accumulate and fill up your mailbox. When full, it can no longer accept additional incoming e-mail messages. This document provides information on how we handle a full POP mailbox situation. In addition, you will also find advice on how to prevent your mailbox from becoming full.

Q: What if I don't receive e-mail messages that I know have been sent to me?

A: Here are some major reasons why you might not receive e-mail messages:

• The sender may have mistyped your e-mail address.
• Your e-mail client (Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Netscape Messenger, Eudora, etc.) may not be configured properly. For help on configuring your e-mail client, please visit How to Configure Your E-mail Program.
• There may have been a temporary problem with an e-mail server.
• Your disk space may be full.
• The inbound message may have been identified as "spam" and delivery was denied.

Q: How much disk space is available for my e-mail?

A: For Unix accounts, the disk space available to your domain is shared by web site content and incoming e-mail messages. For example, if your hosting plan provides 400 megabytes (MB) of disk space and your site uses 170 MB, all e-mail users under your domain share the remaining 230 MB (that is, 400 MB minus 170 MB). If your web site (or one e-mail account) were to use all 400 MB, there would be no space left for incoming e-mail messages.

For Windows accounts, the e-mail disk space available to your domain is dependent upon the Windows hosting plan you have purchased. Please refer to your control panel which provides a listing of the current MB used versus MB available for the plan you have purchased.

If you are the person who is in charge of your web site, it is your responsibility to check your web site regularly to make sure that it has ample free disk space.

Q: What is an e-mail overflow and what is your policy regarding overflows?

A: When your domain no longer has enough free disk space, it cannot accept incoming e-mail messages. In such an instance, we temporarily store your incoming e-mail that is, overflowed e-mail in a storage queue. We are devoted to assuring you that all of your incoming e-mail messages are successfully delivered as quickly as possible. Further, in an overflow e-mail situation, we guarantee that we will make every effort to store overflowed e-mail in a storage queue until it can be delivered, in a timely manner, once sufficient disk space for your domain is again available.

Q: Can I read my mail while it is in the storage queue?

A: No. The storage queue is simply a temporary holding area for your overflowed e-mail. To read your e-mail messages, they must be located in your Inbox.

Q: How do I get my overflow e-mail messages out of the storage queue and into my Inbox?

A: You will need to free some disk space for your Inbox. When disk space is again available, the overflow e-mail messages will be transferred automatically to your Inbox within 12 hours.

Q: Do e-mail messages in the storage queue just sit there?

A: No. We make several attempts to transfer your overflow e-mail messages to your Inbox. In addition, when the first overflow e-mail message is diverted to the storage queue, we immediately send an e-mail notification to its sender. That notification states that (a) the delivery of the message has been postponed as the recipients Inbox is full and that (b) we will continue to try to deliver the messages over the next few days.

Q: If I fill up my disk space, what steps will you take to help me avoid losing my overflowed e-mail messages?

A: To help you to resolve the situation, we do the following:

• Immediately redirect the overflow e-mail messages to an on-line storage queue. This protects you from losing any messages that could have been lost due to full disk space.
• Make several attempts over the next three to five days to deliver the stored overflowed e-mail messages to your account. If the first attempt is unsuccessful, the senders are notified that their e-mail message(s) could not be delivered because the receivers mailbox was full. If, after the last attempt, the e-mail message(s) still could not be delivered, we notify the senders that, after several attempts, we could not deliver their e-mail messages and we advise them try to send their e-mail message(s) again.
• On your domain administrator Control Panel, we display the current amount of disk space that is available for your domain. As this amount approaches 100%, an e-mail overflow can occur should incoming e-mail messages fill the remaining disk space. In such a case, additional incoming e-mail messages will be routed to the overflow queue so they can be redelivered when there again exists free space to receive it. In addition, the domain administrators Control Panel will contain information about possible solutions to the overflow situation.

Q: If my overflow e-mail messages stay in the storage queue for too long, what happens to them?

A: If the overflow e-mail messages could not be delivered after our final attempt to transfer them from the storage queue to your Inbox, the messages are deleted.

Q: How do I avoid an overflow situation?

 A: End users and domain administrators can avoid an overflow situation by doing the following:

End Users:
As an end user, you can help to avoid an overflow situation by just reading your e-mail messages regularly. If you are using an e-mail client such as Microsoft Express, Outlook Express, Eudora, or Netscape Mail, your messages are automatically downloaded when you read them.

Note: Make sure that the Leave a copy of messages on server option in your e-mail client is NOT selected; otherwise, old messages will accumulate within your account and use up your disk space.

In Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, the path to this option is Tools/Accounts/Properties/Advanced. In Netscape Navigator's e-mail client, the path is Edit/Preferences/Mail & Newsgroups/Mail Servers/Edit/POP. Other e-mail clients may have different paths to this option. Please refer to your e-mail client's help files for detailed information.

If you are out of the office you can check your mail using our WebMail feature. If you so use this feature and you have selected to save copies of sent mail or deleted mail, remember to empty these folders occasionally.

Domain Administrators:
Incoming e-mail shares the same disk space as your domain’s web pages. The amount of disk space currently being used is displayed on your Control Panel. It is displayed as a percentage of total disk space that is available for your hosting plan. Incoming e-mail messages are stored in this disk space for all configured e-mail accounts as well as for the “catch all” e-mail account for your domain. As an administrator, you can help to prevent an overflow situation by:

• Making sure that your e-mail end users download their e-mail regularly by using any POP3 desktop e-mail client application. Some popular POP3 clients include Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Eudora, and Pegasus. 
• Monitoring your domain’s available disk space. If the amount of free disk space gets too low you can free up some disk space by removing any unnecessary files. 
• Purchasing additional disk space. If you need additional disk space, just call our Sales Team.
  

Please note: the information on this page applies to ITS web hosting plans. It may or may not apply to other environments. If you are looking for a feature described here, or better support from your hosting provider, please consider hosting your site with ITS!

Copyright © 1996-2024, Integrated Technical Solutions, Inc., all rights reserved. See Terms/Legal for trademarks, copyright, and terms of use.