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myusuf3
Asked: 2010-08-13 06:53:14 +0800 CST

How to determine where biggest files/directories on my system are stored?

  • 772

I was wondering how do you know where the largest files in my system are stored.

For example---

Disk Space Used: 1GB Java: 500MB Java Percentage: 50% maybe represented in a pie chart. Maybe?

I know this maybe a feature overkill. I sometimes forget having stored things and wonder why my disk is so full.

So basically a command that will allow me to run on the file system and provide me with information on disk space used.

Please and thank you.

filesystem command-line disk memory

7 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The Disk Usage Analyzer is available under Ubuntu > Accessories > Disk Usage Analyzer. It provides you with a snazzy pie graph showing what files and folders take up the most space:

    enter image description here

    The documentation on it is a little sparse, but you can find more information on the Ubuntu wiki, and the project page.

    If you're interested in using the command line, there's du which is described here.

    • 53

  2. Unless it changed recently, baobab only shows directories; check out kdirstat for an alternative that actually shows files, coloured by type.

    A commandline alternative is

    du -a | sort -nr | head
    • 32

  3. The solution that @UncleZeiv proposed is not working when there is really no more space left, since sort is using the /tmp folder when there are multiple lines to sort.

    du -a | sort -nr | head
sort: write failed: /tmp/sortuCYq8E: No space left on device

    An alternative is a combination of the answer from @UncleZeiv and @Yoav Weiss, plus adding another path for the temporary location:

    sudo du -a | sort -nr -T /media/usb-key

    Finally, my preferred solution will be a human-readable one that doesn't depend on temp folder and list root directory (/):

    sudo du -ah --max-depth=1  / | sort -hr
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  4. A useful command to that helps in cases you need to determine that for specific directories from the command line:

    du --max-depth=1 -x -h

    It gives you a list of the first depth directories and their sizes

    -x limits the analysis to one file system

    -h shows human readable k/M/Gbytes (this prevents you from sorting the output though)

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  5. The other excellent pie-graph disk usage tool is Filelight. It's a KDE app, and it's available in the repositories.

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  6. Use the Disk Usage Analyser (Applications -> Accessories -> Disk Usage Analyser):

    (The command is baobab).

    Click Analyser -> Scan Filesystem

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  7. Another tool for this is jDiskReport (a Java app)

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