How to Find Large Files and Directories

When your disk space is running low, you need to find out what's taking up all the space.

Finding the Largest Directories

The `du` (disk usage) command is perfect for this. This command will show the top 10 largest directories in the current location:

du -ah . | sort -rh | head -n 10

Finding Individual Large Files

The `find` command can search for files larger than a specific size. For example, to find files larger than 500MB in the `/` directory:

sudo find / -type f -size +500M -exec ls -lh {} \;

Interactive Disk Usage Analyzer

For an easy-to-use interactive view, install and run `ncdu`:

# Install ncdu
sudo apt install ncdu -y # Ubuntu/Debian
sudo dnf install ncdu -y # AlmaLinux/CentOS

# Run it on a directory
ncdu /