How to understand what's taking up disk space?

Question

I'm looking for a linux alternative to WinDirStat. I would like to know what is taking up space on my hard drives.

A program that works on console and doesn't require a UI is preferred .

ncdu is my preferred answer, but I see the first answer says you're having problems with it that aren't in your question. — SDsolar, Sep 09 '17 at 07:42

score 131 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 02 '17 at 22:11

131

If you want a command-line tool, I prefer ncdu, an ncurses version of du. It scans the disk (or a given folder) and then shows the top-level space usages; you can select a given directory to get the corresponding summary for that directory, and go back without needing to reanalyze:

Screenshot of ncdu

If you're ok with a GUI program, Filelight is the closest thing to WinDirStat I've found; it shows a graphical view of space consumption:

Screenshot of Filelight

Like ncdu, Filelight lets you select a given directory to get the breakdown for that directory

edited Apr 02 '17 at 22:11

Stephen Rauch

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answered Nov 12 '10 at 06:35

Michael Mrozek

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don't you think QDirStat is closer to WinDirStat? – Janus Troelsen Sep 08 '16 at 11:51
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@JanusTroelsen, this was answered in 2010. 5 years before the initial commit of QDirStat https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat/commit/78d9fef5c15c246f72c3ad3d1a2b2c8223ccefce – Shmuel Kamensky Apr 14 '22 at 12:57
@ShmuelKamensky And QDirStat is the descendant of KDirStat, which WinDirStat is actually a port of. So their comment is actually (even if indirectly) absolutely relevant. – adamency Feb 02 '24 at 04:04
@adamency, cool history! So QDirStat and WinDirStat are cousins. I didn't mean the comment left by Janus was irrelevant, QDirStat is a good recommendation. Just that the author of the answer could not have known that since it was released way after they answered! – Shmuel Kamensky Feb 03 '24 at 08:28
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@ShmuelKamensky Yup I understood that, no worries :) – adamency Feb 06 '24 at 00:07

score 86 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

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Based on your issues in installing ncdu my recommendation would be to use du and sort on together.

For instance:

du /home | sort -rn (will search all files/directories under /home and sort them by largest to smallest.
du -h /home | sort -rh (same but will show it in MB/KB/etc) - Note this requires coreutils 7.5 or newer (sort --version to check)

You can replace /home with any directory of your choice.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

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answered Nov 12 '10 at 10:46

N J

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That's excellent, thanks for the help. My coreutils is 5.97 - is this why the sort order of du -h isn't right? – ripper234 Nov 12 '10 at 11:26
Yep, you'd have to settle for du /home | sort -rn with coreutils 5.97 or use some 'magic' with perl etc as demonstrated over on ServerFault (http://serverfault.com/q/62411/60012) – N J Nov 12 '10 at 11:27
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OTOH if there is a big sub-sub-directory its bloat will show multiple time (for that dir and each parent dir) at the top of the results, and IMHO that distracts from the true bloat. Using "ncdu" suggested below could help with that, I'm gonna try it. =) – lapo Jan 13 '11 at 21:39
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I find the -size option to "find" useful as well, as it lets you find all files under a certain. At least for GNU find, you can do something like: "find . -size +100M" to find files larger than 100M below the current directory. – gabe. Feb 02 '11 at 04:48

score 59 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 04 '18 at 20:24

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You should be aware that WinDirStat is actually a port of KDirStat, which is a Linux/KDE program. So, if you are looking for a Linux alternative to WinDirStat, you certainly should take a look at KDirStat. It is already packaged in most distros, just install it.

Another alternative is FileLight, already cited by Michael Mrozek, and the Konqueror plugin fsview (you can run it standalone from the command-line).

edited Aug 04 '18 at 20:24

Ted Pudlik

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answered Nov 12 '10 at 20:25

Juliano

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Wow, I never realized that (I guess "Win" in the name should've been a giveaway). A coworker once asked me if there was a Linux version of WinSCP; I died inside a little – Michael Mrozek Nov 13 '10 at 03:27
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@previous comment. ouch. Just ouch. – David Oneill Nov 16 '10 at 20:36
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Note that it will be called K4DirStat for Ubuntu if installing via software center – Josh Hibschman May 17 '18 at 13:26
or sudo apt-get install k4dirstat – Josh Hibschman Nov 29 '18 at 21:32

score 39 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 12 '10 at 09:28

39

Another GUI program is: baobab

alt text

answered Nov 12 '10 at 09:28

sudobash

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In deed, if I'm on Ubuntu I won't bother to look for any alternative. baobap is just enough. – phunehehe Dec 27 '10 at 04:09
It also shows number of files, which sometimes needs to be checked as well as disk space – golimar Aug 13 '18 at 10:26
Now part of GNOME out of the box, on Fedora at least. – Milind R Aug 16 '23 at 08:27
However, when I used it on an NTFS volume (a former Windows boot volume, specifically) of around 100 GB, it kept counting and reached nearly 500 GB in the total size and still kept going - I guess it doesn't have any smarts about counting hardlinks and symlinks. – Milind R Aug 16 '23 at 08:33
Ubuntu - no installation necessary! – diynevala Jan 23 '24 at 06:21

score 16 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

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Use QDirStat (formerly KDirStat).

It includes a perl script that generates a cache file on the server/console without any need for an UI to be running/installed; transfer it to your desktop machine and view it in the gui client.

See https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/256516/186308 for details.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

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answered Aug 24 '16 at 12:21

icyerasor

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it is ridiculously fast. very nice tool – phil294 May 17 '18 at 20:17

score 7 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 03 '14 at 13:52

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I prefer the following command line:

$  du -s -m -x * | sort -n

Breaking it down, du shows disk usage; -s says print the total for each argument (each item in the current directory), -m says show the size in Megabytes. This makes it easier for sort to work; sort doesn't really understand the -h output. The -x ignores other filesystems; this is useful when trying to find space hogs in /var, and /var/spool/foo is a different filesystem.

edited Dec 03 '14 at 13:52

HalosGhost

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answered Dec 03 '14 at 13:36

P Joslin

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Doesn't the top answer already use du? – muru Dec 03 '14 at 13:53
Yes, but du /home on my systems returns tens of thousands of files; I rarely care what the (say) 100 largest of those files are; I typically want to know which subdirectories are taking up the most space. – P Joslin Dec 03 '14 at 20:43
Instead of -s, I specified --max-depth=2, as I wanted to go one directory down from the root directory, but your answer pointed me in that direction. Thanks! – John Eisbrener Oct 13 '16 at 14:06

score 6 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 28 '14 at 08:25

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If you looked at the about screen on windirstat it showed you that it's based on kdirstat.

http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/

answered Aug 28 '14 at 08:25

DF1eCH

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I like the answer - but could you add some context or details? – Volker Siegel Aug 28 '14 at 09:09

score 6 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 12 '10 at 17:21

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There's also this cool python script from /www.vrplumber.com/programming/runsnakerun/

bzr branch lp:~mcfletch/squaremap/trunk squaremap

It's not the most feature rich, but it's run from a single python script so it's extremely portable.

alt text

answered Nov 12 '10 at 17:21

Falmarri

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score 5 · Answer 9 · edited Dec 30 '18 at 01:09

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You could also try GD Map, another GUI tool based on treemaps.

edited Dec 30 '18 at 01:09

Glorfindel

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answered Nov 13 '10 at 00:52

Bruno

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score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Jun 17 '17 at 19:54

xdiskusage is very flexible, lightweight with very lean dependencies, easy to compile..

It shows a tree left-to-right that you can navigate with mouse or arrow keys, zoom in (click or enter), hide some parts for a better view, change sort order, number of colors etc with keys or context menu.

It's so lighweight that you can use it on a remote SSH link with good performance. In this case I recommend -q command line option to disable the progress bar that appears while files are walked.

You can also optionally run du yourself beforehand.

One situation is a remote filesystem which is full or near-full. On that system run du -ak | gzip >log_of_disk_usage.txt.gz, fetch the output and run gzip -dc log_of_disk_usage.txt.gz | xdiskusage -aq locally.
Or even ssh myremotesystem "cd /filesystem_near_full/ ; du -ak | gzip" > log_of_disk_usage.txt.gz to store the result locally without writing anything remotely.

xdiskusage does not offer to modify the filesystem (like move to trash, etc) but you can copy a path to clipboard and paste that into a file manager, terminal etc.

score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 22 '13 at 13:41

I have recently used command line tool (CLI, not TUI): http://zevv.nl/play/code/philesight/

It produces a PNG file which you can view somewhere else. It also has a CGI script.

Most likely you are not limited to text mode at your local workstation, so it should be appropriate.

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Apr 25 '15 at 18:37

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Also to see the files in a specific directory sorted by size after you have found the directory using du use:

ls -lrSh

answered Apr 25 '15 at 18:37

Wodin

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score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Jun 17 '19 at 16:45

Duc (https://duc.zevv.nl/) will work from the command line.

It can be installed and used like this in Debian 9:

# apt install duc
# duc index /
# duc graph /

With this you'll get a file named duc.png in the current directory. Now, you can copy this file to another GUI capable computer and it will look like this:

NOTE: Duc is the replacement for the tool that @OCTAGRAM mentioned in his answer.

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Jun 07 '21 at 09:47

0

For btrfs filesystems, you may like my tool, btdu:

Starts showing results instantly
Shows snapshots / reflinks / cloned files correctly
Shows real (compressed) usage of compressed files

answered Jun 07 '21 at 09:47

Vladimir Panteleev

1,696

How to understand what's taking up disk space?

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