Find Which Folder Is Eating Disk Space

Disk space is low and the user needs to identify which project folder or cache is largest.

Command

du -sh ./* 2>/dev/null | sort -h

Before you run this

System impact: Read-only. Can create load on large logs, directories, filesystems, or process tables.

When not to use it: Do not run from the filesystem root expecting instant results. Start narrow.

Expected output

A human-readable sorted list such as 4.0K ./notes and 1.2G ./video-export.

System impact

Read-only, can be slow. Nothing changes. The command calculates and sorts apparent disk usage.

Scope this to the smallest useful path or service on busy systems.

Recovery / rollback: no state is changed.

When to use it

Use in Projects, Downloads, Desktop, or cache directories to find big items quickly.

When not to use it

Do not run from the filesystem root expecting instant results. Start narrow.

next steps

Related commands

Linux Survival Basics Can be slow

Find Which Folder Is Filling the Disk

The disk was full. The fastest clue was the folder, not the file.

du -sh /var/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h

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Inspect Release Disk Usage

Disk pressure during deploys often starts in old release directories.

du -sh releases/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -10

Web Server Rescue Can be slow

Find Large Directories with du

Once you know a filesystem is full, the next question is where.

du -xh --max-depth=1 /var 2>/dev/null | sort -h

Cybersecurity Triage Sensitive output

Count authorized_keys by User

authorized_keys is the practical SSH access list.

find /home -path '*/.ssh/authorized_keys' -exec sh -c 'for f do user=$(basename "$(dirname "$(dirname "$f")")"); keys=$(grep -vc "^[[:space:]]*#" "$f"); printf "%s %s %s\n" "$user" "$keys" "$f"; done' sh {} + 2>/dev/null | sort

Hosting Operations Can be slow

Keep du on One Filesystem

A cleanup scan should not wander into mounted backups or network storage.