How To Check Disk Space In Ubuntu?

Thursday, Aug 8, 2024 | 4 minutes read | Update at Thursday, Aug 8, 2024

@ İsmail Baydan

Disk space usage should be monitored or checked periodically to prevent system failures and problems. Ubuntu provides different command in order to check disk space. These commands can be used used, free, cached disk usage in different units like MB, GB etc.

Basic df command: The df command is the most popular and easy way to check disk space usage.
```
df
```
Displays the amount of disk space available on the file system.
Human-readable df output: We can use df command with the -h option in order to show units in a more human friendly way by using KB,MG,GB etc.
```
df -h
```
Shows disk space in human-readable format (e.g., KB, MB, GB).
Display file system type with df: We can show the file system type with the df -T .
```
df -T
```
Shows disk space along with the type of file system.
Inodes information using df: Inodes are file system level information about data storage. We can display the inode usage with the df -i command.
```
df -i
```
Displays the number of inodes used and available on each file system.
Check specific file system disk space: A typical Linux system use multiple file systems for different purposes. We can check specific file system disk space with the df -h command. We should also provide the file system path like /dev/sda1 or /dev/vda1 .
```
df -h /dev/sda1
```
Shows disk space usage for a specific file system.
Human-readable and file system type: We can show disk usage with the file system type in a human readable way with the -hT option like below.
```
df -hT
```
Combines human-readable format with file system type.
Check disk space excluding certain file systems: You can display the disk usage by excluding some file systems. For example we can exclude the temporary file systems like tmpfs or devtmpfs like below. We should specify with the -x .
```
df -h -x tmpfs -x devtmpfs
```
Excludes specific file systems (e.g., tmpfs, devtmpfs) from the output.
du command to check directory space: We can list disk usage or the specific directory or path. In the following example we list disk usage for the users home directories those are located under the /home/ .
```
du /home
```
Displays disk usage of a directory and its subdirectories.
Human-readable du output: We can show disk usage with the du command in a more readable way with the -h option.
```
du -h /home
```
Shows disk usage in human-readable format for a directory.
Summarize du output: The du command can be used to display disk usage summary for a specific directory.
```
du -sh /home
```
Provides a summary of disk usage for a directory.
Show disk usage of all subdirectories: By default the du command displays all sub directories disk usage. We can limit the depth of the sub directories with the --max-depth . For example the --max-depth=1 used to list all child directories for the specified directory or path.
```
du -h --max-depth=1 /home
```
Displays disk usage of all subdirectories within a directory.
```
1.2G	/home/ismail
1.2G	/home
```

Sort du output by size:

du -ah /home | sort -rh | head -n 10

Shows the top 10 largest files and directories sorted by size.

1.2G	/home/ismail
320M	/home/ismail/ecommerce
303M	/home/ismail/ecommerce/.git/objects
303M	/home/ismail/ecommerce/.git
289M	/home/ismail/ecommerce/.git/objects/pack/pack-dd745ff07c20fd46.pack
289M	/home/ismail/ecommerce/.git/objects/pack
267M	/home/ismail/.config
212M	/home/ismail/.vscode/extensions
212M	/home/ismail/.vscode
176M	/home/ismail/.cache

Check disk space with lsblk: Another useful command in order to display disk usage is lsblk . Thi scommand lists partitions size.

lsblk

Lists information about all available block devices.

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0    7:0    0     4K  1 loop /snap/bare/5
loop1    7:1    0 161.6M  1 loop /snap/chromium/2828
loop2    7:2    0  74.2M  1 loop /snap/core22/1380
loop3    7:3    0  66.1M  1 loop /snap/cups/1044
loop4    7:4    0 505.1M  1 loop /snap/gnome-42-2204/176
loop5    7:5    0  91.7M  1 loop /snap/gtk-common-themes/1535
loop6    7:6    0  38.7M  1 loop /snap/snapd/21465
sda      8:0    0   100G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0     1M  0 part 
└─sda2   8:2    0   100G  0 part /

Detailed lsblk output:
```
lsblk -f
```
Displays detailed information including file system type.
Check disk usage of current directory: We can simply check the current directory size with the du -sh . command.
```
du -sh .
```
Provides a summary of disk usage for the current directory.
Check disk usage with ncdu: The ncdu is cli based UI which is pretty good with helpfull graphics and information.
```
sudo apt install ncdu
ncdu
```
ncdu is an interactive disk usage analyzer.
Check disk space with df for all file systems:
```
df -a
```
Shows all file systems including those with 0 blocks.
Check disk space of a directory without following symbolic links:
```
du -h -L /home
```
Shows disk usage for a directory without following symbolic links.

These examples illustrate various ways to check and analyze disk space usage on an Ubuntu system, offering both basic and detailed insights into storage.