How To Check Free and Used Disk Space In Ubuntu?

The disk is an important resource for Ubuntu distributions and servers. Especially SSD disks are more expensive than other mechanical disks. So it is important to check free and used disk space regularly and take required actions to empty unnecessary data. Ubuntu provides different ways, commands to check free and used disk space. In this tutorial, we examine command line and GUI ways to list disk space usage.

System Monitor GUI Tool

The System Monitor is a simple GUI tool that lists currently mounted disks with basic information like device name, mount path, file system type, total disk size, available (free) disk space, used disk space. Also, the disk usage is displayed as a bar graph. The System Monitor can be opened via the Ubuntu dash by typing “system monitor”.

System Monitor Disk Usage

Disk Usage Analyzer (Baobab) GUI Tool

Disk Usage Analyzer is advenced disk usage display tool which provides usefull graphics and directory level sizes. The Disk Usage Analyzer is also called as boabab which is its package name to install. It is not installed by default by can be easily installed with the following command.

$ sudo apt install baobab

The Disk Analyzer can be opened via the Ubuntu Dash or via menu.

Disk Usage Analyzer (Baobab) GUI Tool

Qdirstat GUI Tool

Qdirstat is powerfull tool which provides free and used space about disk, partition and directories. It is not installed by default in Ubuntu operating system. The Qdirstat can be installed with the following example.

$ sudo apt install qdirstat

The Qdirstat can be opened via the Ubuntu Dash or Menu. We can see that Qdirstat lists root partitions and child directories sizes, usage percentage and other details with a graphical presentation.

Qdirstat GUI Tool

File Manager Tool

Ubuntu provides different file managers which differs according to the desktop environment. By using the desktop environment the disk usage can be listed. First open the file manager and navigate to the root directory like below. Right click and select Properties .

File Manager Tool

The opened properties windows displays information like path name, used storage, free storage, total capacity.

Root Path Properties and Disk Usage

df Command

The df command can be used to to display amount of disk space available. The -h option is used to list size, used disk space, free disk space in a human readable units like gigabyte. Also the used percentage is provided.

$ df -h
df Command

ncdu Command

The ncdu command can be used to list disk usage only, it do not provides disks free storage. The ncdu is not install by default in Ubuntu and can be installed like below.

$ sudo apt install ncdu

As a command just execute the ncdu command from the command line interface like below.

ncdu Command

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