A system and method for managing space availability in a distributed striped file system is provided. A master data server is configured to send space availability detection messages to a plurality of data volumes servers hosting constituent volumes of a striped volume set. If one of the constituent volumes in the striped volume set has a low-in-space flag set, then the master data volume instructs all of the constituent volumes to set a low-in-space required flag, and no further writes are accepted for the striped volume set. The low-in-space and low-in-space required flags represent two states, and these states are returned in response to subsequent space availability detection messages from the master data server. A procedure for utilizing reserved space to complete an accepted cross stripe write operation is also provided.