Linux Check Disk Space Commands

Linux Check Disk Space Commands

How to check disk space in Linux command line. The command df shows you free disk space and du returns the disk usage statistics for various files and folders.

df command

The df command shows disk usage statistics and it stands for “Disk Free”.

The df command bellow without any options will return the disk size, disk used, available size, disk free percentage and mount point for all system partitions.

df 

df Example

[dragos@localhost ~]$ df
Filesystem          1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs               900440       0    900440   0% /dev
tmpfs                  929904     168    929736   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                  929904   82060    847844   9% /run
tmpfs                  929904       0    929904   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/cl-root  39687236 8365356  31321880  22% /
/dev/sda2             1038336  370900    667436  36% /boot
/dev/mapper/cl-home  19372032 2332336  17039696  13% /home
/dev/sda1              613184    7404    605780   2% /boot/efi
tmpfs                  185980    1184    184796   1% /run/user/42
tmpfs                  185980      92    185888   1% /run/user/1004
[dragos@localhost ~]$

If you want to disk size is displayed in human readable format MB,GB,TB instead of bytes use the -h option.

df -h

df -h example

[dragos@localhost ~]$ df -h
Filesystem           Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs             880M     0  880M   0% /dev
tmpfs                909M  168K  908M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                909M   81M  828M   9% /run
tmpfs                909M     0  909M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/cl-root   38G  8.0G   30G  22% /
/dev/sda2           1014M  363M  652M  36% /boot
/dev/mapper/cl-home   19G  2.3G   17G  13% /home
/dev/sda1            599M  7.3M  592M   2% /boot/efi
tmpfs                182M  1.2M  181M   1% /run/user/42
tmpfs                182M   92K  182M   1% /run/user/1004
[dragos@localhost ~]$

To see all partitons (pseudo, duplicate, inaccessible) use the -a option.

df -ah

df -a example

[dragos@localhost ~]$ df -ah
Filesystem           Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
sysfs                   0     0     0    - /sys
proc                    0     0     0    - /proc
devtmpfs             880M     0  880M   0% /dev
securityfs              0     0     0    - /sys/kernel/security
tmpfs                909M  168K  908M   1% /dev/shm
devpts                  0     0     0    - /dev/pts
tmpfs                909M   81M  828M   9% /run
tmpfs                909M     0  909M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
cgroup                  0     0     0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd
pstore                  0     0     0    - /sys/fs/pstore
efivarfs                0     0     0    - /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
........
tmpfs                182M   92K  182M   1% /run/user/1004
gvfsd-fuse              0     0     0    - /run/user/1004/gvfs
tmpfs                909M   81M  828M   9% /run/netns
[dragos@localhost ~]$

To also see the file system type use df -T option. Disk free human readable and showing file system type also.

df -hT

df -T example

[dragos@localhost ~]$ df -hT
Filesystem          Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs            devtmpfs  880M     0  880M   0% /dev
tmpfs               tmpfs     909M  168K  908M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs               tmpfs     909M   81M  828M   9% /run
tmpfs               tmpfs     909M     0  909M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/cl-root xfs        38G  8.0G   30G  22% /
/dev/sda2           xfs      1014M  363M  652M  36% /boot
/dev/mapper/cl-home xfs        19G  2.3G   17G  13% /home
/dev/sda1           vfat      599M  7.3M  592M   2% /boot/efi
tmpfs               tmpfs     182M  1.2M  181M   1% /run/user/42
tmpfs               tmpfs     182M   92K  182M   1% /run/user/1004
[dragos@localhost ~]$

Most useful options for df.

  -a, --all             include pseudo, duplicate, inaccessible file systems
  -h, --human-readable  print sizes in powers of 1024 (e.g., 1023M)
  -T, --print-type      print file system type

du command

The du command shows disk usage of directories and files. It’s useful to find folders and files that use a lot of disk space.

List all files and folders with their size in the current directory.

du -h 

Show disk usage of all files

du -ah

ls

Lists folders and files and shows their size on disk, human readable.

ls -al

ls -alh

stat

Display the used disk space of a folder.

[dragos@localhost ~]$ stat /home/dragos
  File: /home/dragos
  Size: 219             Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: fd02h/64770d    Inode: 33807434    Links: 8
Access: (0700/drwx------)  Uid: ( 1004/  dragos)   Gid: ( 1004/  dragos)
Access: 2021-09-15 11:05:28.795212138 +0300
Modify: 2021-09-15 10:12:34.093313726 +0300
Change: 2021-09-15 10:12:34.093313726 +0300
 Birth: -
[dragos@localhost ~]$

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