Linux: Find Disk Usage of Files and Directories

Working with servers, you might need to check the information of disk usage of files and directories on your machine. “du” (Disk Usage) command serves this purpose in Linux/Unix. The “du” command displays the files and directory sizes in a recursively manner and accepts different parameter options that can be used to display results in various formats.

– Get disk usage summary of a directory tree and each of its subDi directories:

du <directory path>

– Use “-h” option with “du” to get disk usage summary sizes in “Human readable format” (Bytes, Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes etc.)

du -h <directory path>

– Get the summary of a grand total disk usage size of an directory using the option “-s”

du -sh <directory path>

– Get disk usage of all the files and directories using “-a” option

du -a <directory path>

– Combining “-a” and “-h” options displays disk usage of all files and directories in human readeable format

du -ah <directory path>

– “-c” flag along “-h” provides a grand total usage disk space at the last line.

du -ch <directory path>

– Excluding some files matching some pattern can be achieved using “–exclude” option.

du -ah --exclude="*.txt" <directory path>

– “–time” option can be used to display modification time for files & directories

du -ha --time <directory path>

– Similary, flags “-k” and “-m” can be used to display size in Kilobyte and Megabytes respectively.

du -k <directory path>
du -m <directory path>