Every folder on a volume shares the same space — until one folder eats all of it. A quota is the fence that keeps one runaway folder from breaking everyone's work.
In the setup video, the quota step is marked optional and passed in seconds. For a team NAS, it is worth a slower look. A shared folder quota limits how much space one folder may use on its volume, so the video archive cannot silently consume the space the accounts team needs tomorrow. This page explains how quotas behave, how to set one, and how to choose a size the team will respect instead of work around.
All shared folders on the same volume share its space. Without quotas, one folder — video projects, an endless backup job, a camera archive — can grow until the volume is completely full, and then every folder stops working at once. A quota turns a volume-wide emergency into a single folder reaching its own limit.
Changing a quota later is safe and does not move or delete any data.
A quota is a planning tool, not a punishment. Look at what the folder holds today, add realistic growth for a year, and set the limit a little above that. A quota set too small just creates support tickets and teaches the team to stash files in the wrong folders to dodge the limit — which quietly destroys your folder structure.
When a folder reaches its quota, new writes to that folder fail — uploads stop and applications saving into it report errors — while other folders keep working normally. That failure is the feature working as designed. The fix is a decision, not a trick: archive old data out, delete genuine junk, or raise the quota deliberately.
DSM has two different quota systems. A shared folder quota limits the folder as a whole. Separately, user quotas (in User & Group settings) limit how much one person can store across folders. For team folders, the folder quota is usually the right tool — the team's shared space is what you are protecting. User quotas suit personal home folders.
See the full setup live — creating the folder, setting permissions and verifying access with a second user.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYes. Edit the shared folder and raise or lower the quota at any time. Lowering it below the current usage does not delete anything, but new writes will fail until space is freed or the quota is raised.
No. A shared folder quota limits the folder's total size across all users. If you need per-person limits, DSM also offers user quotas in the User and Group settings.
Writes to that folder fail — uploads and saves report errors — while other folders on the same volume continue normally. Free space, archive old data, or deliberately raise the quota to resolve it.