How to handle disk full errors in java

Question

I am working on a Java application. We read lot of data, manipulate it and then write to files in local m/c. If, in any case, the disk is full then how to handle this exception in Java application.

Answer 1

You can take a look here.
This workaround solves the problem that no exception is thrown when your disk is full.

Basically, it is done by this:

FileOutputStream fos = ...;
fos.write("hello".getBytes());
fos.getFD().sync();
fos.close();

The call to the sync() method will throw a SyncFailedException, when the disk is full.

Answer 2

Can you specify more exactly what do you mean when you say how to handle this exception?

The way I see it there are two ways:

• either you will present that information to user and then the user will be required to clean up some disk space
• or you will delete some of the unneeded data that you manipulate on your own, from the application, for example the data that has been for the longest time in the system or by some other criteria.

Answer 3

This is a good blog post on the topic: http://weblog.janek.org/Archive/2004/12/20/ExceptionWhenWritingToAFu.html

Also, this bug ticket for Java, explains various strategies: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4338871