---
author: ~ben
published: true
title: disk usage tools and guidelines
description: tips and tricks for keeping track of your disk usage on tilde.team and elsewhere
category:
- about
- guidelines
---
files tend to keep growing and growing until you run out of disk space all of a sudden.
let's take a look at some tools to keep an eye on disk usage.
## tilde.team guidelines
even though we have plenty of disk space to go around on tilde.team,
we request that you keep your usage below 1 gb.
a good rule of thumb is to consider if _all_ teammates
were to use the same amount of resources and how that would affect
the experience for everyone else.
> as of march 2022, disk quotas will now be enforced.
> 1gb soft limit where you will get reminded.
> 3gb hard limit where you will no longer be able to write more files.
admins regularly take a look at disk usage in `/home` and may
request that you delete large or unnecessary files.
please check with admins if you expect to use a lot of disk
for a short period of time so we can adjust your quota temporarily.
## handy tools
### quota
run `quota` to see your current usage and grace period (if you're over).
add `-s` to print using friendlier units.
### du
`du` (short for `d`isk `u`sage) is the go-to tool.
common switches include:
* `-h`: human readable
* `-s`: summarize
* `-c`: total
example:
to see the disk usage of the current directory, run:
du -sh
check the manpage for more information and additional switches
### ncdu
`ncdu` (short for `nc`urses `d`isk `u`sage) is extremely useful for visualizing
disk usage.
call `ncdu` with no args to recurse starting in the current directory or
pass a dir name to start there
try it on your `$HOME` and see which files and dirs are taking up the most
space.
press `?` to see additional keybinds once you've started it up. you can change
the sort order, open a shell, and delete files without closing the program.
### df
`df` (short for `d`isk `f`ree) lists mounted disks with usage, free space,
and capacity. try it out from your shell to get a quick glance at total
disk usage
don't forget to use `-h` to get human readable units.
