Should We Use Them?

There are pros and cons to running quotas. Implementing them usually has some performance issues. It takes slightly longer to boot the system and there are delays at login time as the user's quotas are being checked. These delays may be insignificant, depending on the number of filesystems and users that are using quotas. For these reasons, as we pointed out earlier, they are normally only run on critical areas.

On the other hand, users rarely tidy their areas up unless they are forced to—it is common knowledge that as soon as any disk space appears, someone will fill it up again almost as quickly. By allocating realistic quotas, this space becomes easier to manage. If the total hard limits are less than the total amount of disk space, the system is protected from failure due to a lack of disk space.