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[SOLVED] What is eating my hard disk?!

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CWW
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[SOLVED] What is eating my hard disk?!

#1 Post by CWW »

Hi

I need help

I am using Debian XFCE
At the beginning of yesterday, I had about 50 gigs free of storage on my only hard disk. I only did light coding, light io gaming and light video watching. At the end of yesterday, I had about 39 gigs free of storage left. It was too late, so I shut my computer down.

Here I am the next morning, with 38.66 gigs of free space left. What is wrong with my hard disk?!

This is all of the info I can give you. Sorry if it is not enough.

EDIT: I installed this program called "Stacer", used the disk cleaner tool, and freed a hell amount of space on my computer. Thank everyone in the Debian community for all your help. :D :D :D
Last edited by CWW on 2021-12-01 03:08, edited 2 times in total.

dlu2021
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Re: What is eating my hard disk?!

#2 Post by dlu2021 »

You can try running the following command in a terminal window for your home directory, it will give you to top 20 largest folders:

Code: Select all

du -d 1 --one-file-system | sort -n -r | head -n 20

mm3100
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Re: What is eating my hard disk?!

#3 Post by mm3100 »

Check your logs to see if there is something repeating, as it could quickly grow in size.

p.H
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Re: What is eating my hard disk?!

#4 Post by p.H »

Better scan the whole filesystem as root. Could be log files running wild.

Code: Select all

du -hxd1 / | sort -h
If separate /home or /var (see df) :

Code: Select all

du -hxd1 /home | sort -h
du -hxd1 /var | sort -h
And so on with each big subdirectory.

milomak
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Re: What is eating my hard disk?!

#5 Post by milomak »

the archive folder for apt often plays a role in this type of thing

it then may also be temp folders related to the things you do
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CWW
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Re: What is eating my hard disk?!

#6 Post by CWW »

mm3100 wrote: 2021-11-26 17:46 Check your logs to see if there is something repeating, as it could quickly grow in size.
Ok, how do I do that?

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oswaldkelso
df -h | grep > 20TiB
df -h | grep > 20TiB
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Re: [SOLVED] What is eating my hard disk?!

#7 Post by oswaldkelso »

look in /var/logs

But the first thing I'd do for an easy life is install ncdu

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ncdu /
Thank me later
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Re: [SOLVED] What is eating my hard disk?!

#8 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

Better install baobab.

Thank me after You thank to Mr oswaldkelso :mrgreen:

(ncdu is really great when working without GUI / with ssh shell)
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Re: [SOLVED] What is eating my hard disk?!

#9 Post by sunrat »

If you go to ncdu website, many disk usage analyzers are listed under "Similar Projects". I generally use p.H suggestion except add "r" to list the largest on top.

Code: Select all

du -hxd1 / | sort -hr
du doesn't need to be installed like ncdu as it's likely already there.
Baobab is for Gnome so I pass on that one. Filelight or K4DirStat are better for KDE if you want a GUI. QDirStat is a DE-agnostic Qt based version.

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