7 of the Best Free Linux Disk Usage Analyzers
A disk usage analyzer is a utility which helps users to
visualize the disk space being used by each folder and files on a hard
disk or other storage media. This type of application often generates a
graphical chart to help the visualization process.
Disk usage analyzers are popular with system
administrators as one of their essential tools to prevent important
directories and partitions from running out of space. Having a hard
disk with insufficient free space can often have a detrimental effect
on the system's performance.
It can even stop users from logging on to the system, or, in
extreme circumstances, cause the system to hang.
However, disk usage analyzers are not just useful tools for
system administrators. Whilst modern hard disks are terabytes in size,
there
are many folk who seem to forever run out of hard drive space. Often
the culprit is a large video and/or audio collection, bloated software
applications, or games. Sometimes the hard disk is also full
of data that
that users have no particular interest in. For example, left
unchecked, log files and package archives can consume large chunks of
hard disk space.
File systems can have millions of files. Keeping track of them
can be an almost impossible task without some utility. Here
steps in the disk usage analyzer. Linux has a good selection of this
type of software for rooting out space eaters.
To provide an insight into the quality of software that is
available, we have compiled a list of the 7 of the most useful disk
usage analyzers. Hopefully, there will be something of interest
here for anyone who wants to recapture their disk space.
Now, let's explore the 7 disk usage analyzers at hand.
For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description
with an in-depth analysis of its features, screenshots, together with
links to relevant resources and reviews.
| GUI based Disk Usage Analyzers |
| Disk
Usage Analyser |
Component part of the gnome-utils package |
| agedu |
Utility
for tracking down wasted disk space
|
| JDiskReport |
Java based disk drive analyzer |
| Filelight |
Creates
an interactive map to visualise disk usage |
|
|
|
| Console based Disk Usage Analyzers |
| du |
Venerable
utility which displays disk usage statistics |
| gt5 |
Shell program to display visual
disk usage with navigation
|
| ncdu |
ncurses disk usage viewer |
|
|
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Last Updated Sunday, March 18 2012 @ 12:48 PM EST |