How to find the biggest Directories and Files in Linux

• If you want to find the biggest directories under a partition (For eg, /home), you will need to run the following command.

du -ah /home | sort -n -r | head -n 15

• To display the biggest directories in the current working directory, you will need to run following command.

du -ah | sort -n -r | head -n 15

du – It is used to estimate file space usage.

a – It is used to displays all files and folders.

sort – It is used to sort lines of text files.

-n – It is used to compare according to string numerical value.

-r – It is used to reverse the result of comparisons.

head – It is used to output the first part of files.

-n – It is used to print the first ‘n’ lines. (In this case, the command displayed first 15 lines).

• To display the largest folders/files including the sub-directories, you will need to run following command.

du -Sh | sort -rh | head -15

du – It is used to estimate file space usage.

-h – It is used to print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 10 MB).

-S – It is used to exclude size of subdirecis used tories.

-s – It is used to display only a is used total for each argument.

sort – It is used to sort lines of text files.

-r – It is used to reverse the result of comparisons.

head – It is used to output the first part of files.

• To display the biggest file sizes only, you will need to run the following command:

find -type f -exec du -Sh {} + | sort -rh | head -n 15

• To find the biggest files in a particular location, you will need to just include the path besides the find command:

find /home/username/Downloads/ -type f -exec du -Sh {} + | sort -rh | head -n 15

OR

find /home/username/Downloads/ -type f -printf "%s %p\n" | sort -rn | head -n 15

Note :-

• The above command will display the largest file from directory /home/username/Downloads/
• Replace /home/username/Downloads/ as per your requirement.