Linux: Check how much disk storage each directory takes up (Disk Usage command – du)

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The Linux command du stands for disk usage which is used to check the amount of disk storage any particular directory or file is using. By default, the simple command:

du

Would return the disk usage in God-knows-what-unit of each of the directories in the current working directory and those beneath them — in a recursive manner. If you happen to have lots of them, the returned stats would be scrolling down crazily which barely makes it any useful.

Even if you have specified a specific directory such as "somedir":

du somedir

It still works in this uncomfortable way.

The solution is to use the -sh switch, the one switch a beginner will ever need:

du -sh

Which simply returns the amount of disk space the current directory and all those stuff in it are using as a whole, something like:

2.4G

Much much more intuitive and readable.

By:

du -sh somedir

You can find out how much disk storage directory "somedir" is using:

101M    somedir

To get all the subsequent / child directories disk usage from the current directory, simply use the asterisk:

du -sh *

It will then list the disk usage of all of them (but not recursively) one by one in a very readable manner:

8.0K    dir1
1.4G    dir2
135M    dir3

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6 thoughts on “Linux: Check how much disk storage each directory takes up (Disk Usage command – du)”

  1. Pradeep

    This can be a useful thing to web administrators.

    I have a website and I want to check how much a folder /upload/ is consuming space. This folder contains, mostly, images of hotels etc.

    I would use your “du” command this way, please comment if I am wrong,
    du -sh /public_html/upload/*

    Since I do not have a direct shell access, I would put it into a php file and then open that php in the browser.

  3. nick

    @pradebban Excellent question. I’ve seen it asked all over the net. The best answer I’ve ever seen is as follows:

    du –max-depth=0 -k * | sort -nr | awk ‘{ if($1>=1024*1024) {size=$1/1024/1024; unit=”G”} else if($1>=1024) {size=$1/1024; unit=”M”} else {size=$1; unit=”K”}; if(size<10) format="%.1f%s"; else format="%.0f%s"; res=sprintf(format,size,unit); printf "%-8s %s\n",res,$2 }'

  4. Roman

    Hey Nick et al, that was a great du/awk combo syntax you posted. I had to rewrite it a bit since the syntax characters int he browser got changed or something to that extent:

    du -max-depth=0 -k *|sort -nr|awk ‘{if($1>=1024*1024) {size=$1/1024/1024; unit=”G”} else if($1>=1024) {size=$1/1024; unit=”M”} else {size=$1; unit=”K”}; if(size<10) format="%.1f%s"; else format="%.0f%s"; res-sprintf(format,size,unit); print "%-8s %s\n",res,$2}'

    Out of that I got the following output when I ran the command against my /home/ dir:
    %-8s %s
    VirtualBox
    %-8s %s
    ISO
    %-8s %s
    Downloads
    …….etc

    Are these "%-8s %s" supposed to be printed out like that ?

    Thanks,
    -Roman

  5. Steve

    I couldn’t get the du * command to list all the directories (just gave me files) on Ubuntu 12.04 so I made a quick mod using a find loop:

    while IFS= read -r -d ” file; do sudo du –max-depth=0 -k $file; done < =1024*1024) {size=$1/1024/1024; unit=”G”} else if($1>=1024) {size=$1/1024; unit=”M”} else {size=$1; unit=”K”}; if(size<10) format="%.1f%s"; else format="%.0f%s"; res=sprintf(format,size,unit); printf "%-8s %s\n",res,$2 }'

    Change “find ~/” to the directory of your choice and remove the “-type d” directive to include files as well. Note that I used sudo as I had a few folders throw permission errors.

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