How accurate is the Site Setting/Storage Metrics menu for content database size?

Question

I'm speccing a Site Collection, it's been proposed to merge two site collections in to a single, global site collection. I've read that a site collection has a 100GB recommended limit, so I'll go with that.

I'd like to measure the current Site Collection sizes. My question is how accurate is the Site Collection/Storage Metrics menu? Some people use Powershell for this, but I'm not skilled in it, so I'd like to rely on the Storage Metrics menu if I can! The trouble is for one of the Site Collections, the Storage Metrics only picks up partial data - for some of the sub-sites it find nothing significant, even though I know there are 100s of files saved there. (*although after waiting for some time, the Storage Metrics menu does detect significant content there - is it reliable though?).

What is my alternative - use Sharepoint Designer to check the Site Collection content database sizes? Or perhaps find someone who can run a Powershell script?

A bonus question/issue (this might be better as a separate question). We are using StoragePoint to 'externalise BLOB files' (basically it moves large files from the SQL-SP database to a location on the server - we've configured it at 3.99MB+). Would the Storage Metrics menu detect externalised BLOB files?

Answer 1

Storage Metric is a powerful options to get a feel of how much amount of data is getting stored with respect to the total space available.

Yes, they are pretty correct and the problem that you are facing is also a known issue with SharePoint.

I do not know the UI way to solve this issue (storage metrics remain same even after files are added) but I do know how to solve it via PowerShell .

So the solution is simple . If the storage metrics is not showing you the most recent data it is time to reCalcuate it .

Use the below piece of PowerShell for this -

$web = get-spsite "Your Site"

$web.RecalculateStorageMetrics();

Now you will observe that the Storage metrics value has changed and this is the correct value .

Go ahead and try it . Let me know if it still doesn't work .