Check Disk Usage on Linux

Command line, Devops

Check what’s consuming all your disk space quickly and easily

We can use the du command to find what’s using up all your disk space

List folders and their disk usage, including subdirectories

du -h

Example:

$ du -h
671M    ./Arch Linux
6.5G    ./Debian-based/Kali Linux
9.4G    ./Debian-based/Ubuntu
17G     ./Debian-based
415M    ./Gentoo
11G     ./RHEL-based/AlmaLinux
14G     ./RHEL-based/CentOS
1.9G    ./RHEL-based/Fedora
27G     ./RHEL-based
44G     .

List root folders and their disk usages

du -h --max-depth=1

Example:

du -h --max-depth=1
671M    ./Arch Linux
17G     ./Debian-based
415M    ./Gentoo
27G     ./RHEL-based
44G     .

Note: The --max-depth parameter can be used to limit subfolder lists to any level desired

Sort by disk usage

Pipe the output of the du -h command into the sort command to get the list sorted by disk usage. This can be used in conjunction with --max-depth as well

du -h | sort -h

Example:

$ du -h | sort -h
415M    ./Gentoo
671M    ./Arch Linux
1.9G    ./RHEL-based/Fedora
6.5G    ./Debian-based/Kali Linux
9.4G    ./Debian-based/Ubuntu
11G     ./RHEL-based/AlmaLinux
14G     ./RHEL-based/CentOS
17G     ./Debian-based
27G     ./RHEL-based
44G     .

Check over all disk usage of the system

The df command can be used to check the overall disk usage and the available disk space on a system

df -h

Example:

df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mmcblk0p1   28G   18G  8.2G  69% /
none             16G     0   16G   0% /dev
tmpfs            16G   88K   16G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs            16G  118M   16G   1% /run
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs            16G     0   16G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/nvme0n1    458G   44G  391G  11% /mnt/nvme0n1
tmpfs           3.2G   24K  3.2G   1% /run/user/1000

Use the -T option to list the filesystem type of the disks as well

df -Th