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hawkeye
Asked: 2010-10-10 19:00:04 +0800 CST

How to find out how much disk space is remaining?

  • 772

What is the command to find out how much disk space is being used/remaining?

server command-line disk disk-usage

8 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can use two commands: df and du.

    df - report file system disk space usage

    Usage works like such:

    df -h

    Which should output something like this:

    Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vzfs              20G  3.5G   16G  18% /

    The -h flag provides human readable output (which makes reading of the output - easier).

    du - estimate file space usage

    A second tool is with du which is a slower approach but will give you a better break down of a per directory. Information on that can be found in How to determine where the biggest files/directories on my system are stored?

    • 250

  2. There are several good command line tools for reporting disk usage. Use the one that's most helpful to you:

    df

    $ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              56G  4.4G   48G   9% /
none                  1.5G  256K  1.5G   1% /dev
none                  1.5G  472K  1.5G   1% /dev/shm
none                  1.5G  400K  1.5G   1% /var/run
none                  1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /var/lock
tmpfs                 1.5G  596K  1.5G   1% /var/log
tmpfs                 1.5G  8.0K  1.5G   1% /var/log/apt
/dev/sdb2             840G  579G  253G  70% /home

    df is installed by default.

    pydf

    $ pydf
Filesystem  Size  Used Avail Use%                               Mounted on
/dev/sda1    55G 4437M   48G  7.9 [##.........................] /         
none       1506M  256k 1505M  0.0 [...........................] /dev      
/dev/sdb2   839G  578G  252G 68.9 [###################........] /home

    Column headers are colored.

    discus

    $ discus
Mount           Total         Used         Avail      Prcnt      Graph
/               55.02 GB      4.33 GB     50.69 GB     7.9%   [*---------]
/sys                0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
+onnections         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
+rnel/debug         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
+l/security         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
/dev             1.47 GB       256 KB      1.47 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/dev/shm         1.48 GB       472 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/var/run         1.48 GB       400 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/var/lock        1.48 GB         0 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/var/log         1.48 GB       596 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
+ar/log/apt      1.48 GB         8 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/home          839.00 GB    578.13 GB    260.87 GB    68.9%   [*******---]
+infmt_misc         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
+e/ak/.gvfs         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]

    Column headers and progress bars are colored.

    di

    $ di
Filesystem         Mount              Mebis     Used    Avail %Used fs Type
/dev/sda1          /                56340.2   4436.7  49041.6  13%  ext4   
/dev/sdb2          /home           859138.9 592008.8 258401.8  70%  ext4   
tmpfs              /var/log          1511.2      0.6   1510.6   0%  tmpfs  
tmpfs              /var/log/apt      1511.2      0.0   1511.2   0%  tmpfs
    • 72

  3. You can use this command to find out how much space files in your home directory (replace ~/ with / for entire filesystem) and sort by largest files

    du -sk ~/* | sort -n
    • 8

  4. Try du -sh <dir>.

    For example, du -sh /home/mark will show a summarised usage report in human-readable output for /home/mark.

    • 8

  5. GNOME System Monitor

    If you prefer graphical gnome-system-monitor:

    screenshot

    Disk Usage Analyzer

    screenshot

    The Disk Usage Analyzer counterpart for CLI would be ncdu.

    • 6

  6. df -h is your best bet (run it in the Terminal).

    • 4

  7. ncdu

    You can also use ncdu (available directly from the Ubuntu repos) which use the ncurses library for showing a graphical overview directly in the terminal.

    For example:

    ncdu -x /

    will analyze disk usage on root partition without crossing filesystem boundaries.

    • 4

  8. Note that df -h will show you only remaining space on mounted partitions. Suppose there are NTFS and FAT32 partitions too before running it note that mount all the partitions. If Ubuntu is sole OS on your machine then I don't see any problem with df.

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