mjhjmtu

Is it possible to list the largest files on my hard drive? I frequently use df -H to display my disk usage, but this only gives the percentage full, GBs remaining, etc.

I do a lot of data-intensive calculations, with a large number of small files and a very small number of very large files. Since most of my disk space used is in a very small number of files, it can be difficult to track down where these large files are. Deleting a 1 kB file does not free much space, but deleting a 100 GB file does. Is there any way to sort the files on the hard drive in terms of their size?

Thanks.

With standard available tools:

To list the top 10 largest files from the current directory: du . | sort -nr | head -n10

To list the largest directories from the current directory: du -s * | sort -nr | head -n10

UPDATE These days I usually use a more readable form (as Jay Chakra explains in another answer and leave off the | head -n10, simply let it scroll off the screen. The last line has the largest file or directory (tree).

Sometimes, eg. when you have lots of mount points in the current directory, instead of using -x or multiple --exclude=PATTERN, it is handier to mount the filesystem on an unused mount point (often /mnt) and work from there.

Mind you that when working with large (NFS) volumes, you can cause a substantial load on the storage backend (filer) when running du over lots of (sub)directories. In that case it is better to consider setting quota on the volume.

Adding to jippie's answer

To list the largest directories from the current directory in human readable format:

du -sh * | sort -hr | head -n10

Sample:

[~]$ du -sh * | sort -hr | head -n10
48M app
11M lib
6.7M Vendor
1.1M composer.phar
488K phpcs.phar
488K phpcbf.phar
72K doc
16K nbproject
8.0K composer.lock
4.0K README.md

It makes it more convenient to read :)

Try ncdu, as it can give you an overview of disk usage. From its website:

A disk usage analyzer with an ncurses interface, aimed to be run on a remote server where you don't have an entire gaphical setup, but have to do with a simple SSH connection. ncdu aims to be fast, simple and easy to use, and should be able to run in any minimal POSIX-like environment with ncurses installed.

(gnu)

du -max /dir | sort -nWill display big files as well as big directories, can be used to identify where you need to do some cleanup.

du -max | sort -n | tail -1000
...
46632 ./i386/update/SuSE-SLES/8/rpm/i586/kernel-source-2.4.21-138.i586.rpm
49816 ./UnitedLinux/apt/i386/RPMS.updates/k_debug-2.4.21-138.i586.rpm
679220 ./UnitedLinux/apt/i386/RPMS.updates
679248 ./UnitedLinux/apt/i386
679252 ./UnitedLinux/apt
691820 ./UnitedLinux/i586
691836 ./i386/update/SuSE-SLES/8/rpm/i586
695192 ./i386/update/SuSE-SLES/8/rpm
695788 ./i386/update/SuSE-SLES/8
695792 ./i386/update/SuSE-SLES
695804 ./i386/update
695808 ./i386
1390184 ./UnitedLinux

(I know that's a quite old tree :p )

There is a simple and effective way to find size of every file and directory in Ubuntu:

Applications > Accessories > Disk Usage Analyzer

in this window click "Scan Filesystem" button on toolbar. after a short time (seconds) you have disk usage of every directory and file.

If you prefer a graphical tool, theres https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat

You can try with this command, it will list all files larger than 20Mb.

find / -type f -size +20000k -exec ls -lh ; 2> /dev/null 
 | awk ' print $NF ": " $5 ' | sort -hrk 2,2