We've been successfully using deduplication on several file servers since the introduction of server 2012.
I have a major problem (for me). I'm having trouble accurately determining how much space someone is using on these directory structures. For years I have used a program called Windirstat to dig in and show me where space is wasted. This tool gets confused by dedupe, i found doing some research that it's because it doesn't have access to the hidden folders.
I found a psexec command to run this program as System so it can see everything, but all that does is let it inside the dedupe directory to get that folder size.
Normally on a file system, I would use Windirstat to determine who is wasting space, maybe someone dumped 400GB of data in a share folder, and either remove it or work with them to remove it.
Now I have no way of seeing this wasted space. Even if I do remove files, I don't know what affect that will have on the overall deduplication store, because ultimately that's where most of the space is used on this volume.
I now have a branch office server that is 93% full. This server has no room for more drives. While I'm working on procurement of a replacement server, i would like to dig in and see what pressure i can take off this system so it doesn't fill up, but I find myself helpless.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.