Finding all large files in the root filesystem

Try:

find / -xdev -type f -size +100M

It lists all files that has size bigger than 100M.

If you want to know about directory, you can try ncdu.

If you aren't running Linux, you may need to use -size +204800 or -size +104857600c, as the M suffix to mean megabytes isn't in POSIX.

find / -xdev -type f -size +102400000c

In addition to @Gnouc answer , you can also add ls -la to get more details. You should have sudo privileges to do that .

$ find / -xdev -type f -size +100M -exec ls -la {} \; | sort -nk 5

To only see files that are in the gigbyte, do:

root# du -ahx / | grep -E '\d+G\s+'


1.8G    /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/A960D58E-A644-4497-B3C1-866A529BF919
1.8G    /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2

The following command not only find you the top 50 largest files (>100M) on your filesystem, but also sort (GNU sort) by the biggest:

find / -xdev -type f -size +100M -exec du -sh {} ';' | sort -rh | head -n50

-xdev Don't descend directories on other filesystems.

^{On BSD find use -x which is equivalent to the deprecated -xdev primary.}

For all files and directories, it's even easier:

du -ahx / | sort -rh | head -20

(the -x flag is what's required to constrain du to a single filesystem)

If you're not using GNU sort (from coreutils), use it without -h:

du -ax / | sort -rn | head -20

For current directory only (for quicker results), replace / with ..

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