Hosting Operations

List Largest Files in a Backup

You need to rank backup files by size.

Command

find backup -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head

What changed

Nothing changes. The command prints file sizes and paths sorted largest first.

Danger

safe

When to use it

Use when backups are growing or a storage bill suddenly changes.

When not to use it

Do not delete files just because they are large; confirm age, ownership, and restore value first.

Undo or recovery

No undo needed because this command is read-only.

Expected output

A largest-first list of backup files with byte counts.

demo script

Disposable terminal steps

find backup -type f -print | sort
find backup -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head

Terminal transcript Demo JSON

simulated output

What it looks like

disposable vessel

::fixture-ready::
$ find backup -type f -print | sort
backup/.snapshot
backup/app/config.yml
backup/content/index.md
backup/old-report.csv
backup/tmp/empty.cache
::exit-code::0
$ find backup -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head
39 backup/app/config.yml
26 backup/content/index.md
13 backup/old-report.csv
0 backup/tmp/empty.cache
0 backup/.snapshot
::exit-code::0

YouTube Short

Rank backup files by size.

When backups grow unexpectedly, sort files by bytes before guessing what changed.

experiments

A/B tests to run

Metric: save_rate

A: Backup storage grew.

B: Rank by bytes first.