507 Insufficient Storage
What 507 means
HTTP 507 Insufficient Storage, defined by the WebDAV specification in RFC 4918, means the server cannot complete a method because it does not have enough storage space to save the representation needed to successfully carry out the request. Unlike a generic 500, 507 is specific about the nature of the failure: the request was understood and would otherwise succeed, but the underlying storage medium, whether disk space, a database quota, or an object storage limit, has run out. It is most commonly encountered in WebDAV-based systems such as calendar servers, file-sync backends, and some CMS platforms that use WebDAV under the hood.
Because the underlying idea, running out of space mid-operation, is universal, some non-WebDAV APIs and storage services reuse 507 informally to signal a full disk, an exhausted storage quota, or a database that has hit its allocated size limit, even outside a strict WebDAV context. This makes 507 a useful, specific alternative to a generic 500 when the operator wants API consumers to be able to distinguish an out-of-space condition from other kinds of server failure, provided both sides agree on that convention.
Common causes
- The server's underlying disk volume has run out of free space to write the new or updated file.
- A storage quota, whether per-user, per-bucket, or per-database, configured by the operator has been reached.
- A WebDAV PUT, COPY, or MKCOL operation cannot allocate the storage needed to complete the write.
- Temporary files, logs, or backups have accumulated and consumed the disk space the application needs for normal operation.
How to fix a 507
If you are the client (browser user or API caller)
- Reduce the size of the upload or request payload if possible, since the failure is specifically about available storage.
- Wait and retry later if the storage issue is likely to be resolved by the operator, such as a quota that resets or a cleanup job that runs periodically.
If you run the server
- Free up disk space by clearing temporary files, rotating or archiving logs, and removing stale backups on the affected volume.
- Increase the storage quota or provision additional disk or volume capacity ahead of expected growth.
- Add monitoring and alerting on disk usage and storage quotas so operators are notified well before the limit is actually hit.
- Move large or infrequently accessed files to cheaper, expandable object storage instead of a fixed-size local volume.
Example
PUT /webdav/files/report.pdf HTTP/1.1
Host: files.example.com
Content-Length: 5242880
HTTP/1.1 507 Insufficient Storage
Content-Type: text/plain
The server has insufficient storage to complete this write.Try it live
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