Disk Usage Analyzer is a helpful tool to analyze disk usage in CentOS. This Application analyzes the disk usage and provides the usage details in Graphical view & in a Tree view. This helps the users to see which directory branch has occupied more disk space; so that it can help to make the decision on extending or clean-up the disk space.
In this article, I am going to explain some of the features of the Disk Usage Analyzer Application.
I have verified this on CentOS 6.10 (32 bit) Operating System.
Step 1. From CentOS, click on Applications menu -> select System Tools -> and from the sub-menu select the menu item “Disk Usage Analyzer” to open the Application.
Step 2. Once the application is opened, you will see the usage of the total filesystem & its usage representation in Graphical view. For example, in the left side panel, it displays the total filesystem usage in % and the size of the space utilized so far. And its graphical representation is displayed on the right side panel.
Step 3. Disk Usage Analyzer application shows the usage of the entire filesystem or home folder or particular folder or even a folder from a remote system. We will look through the below steps, on how we can get these details.
Step 3.1. Select Analyzer menu -> select Scan Home Folder menu item OR press Ctrl + S key combination to start to scan the home folder. Also, you can click the “Scan Home” toolbar button to start analyzing the disk usage of home folder.
Step 3.2. To start to scan the entire filesystem, click on the “Scan filesystem” toolbar button or select Analyzer menu -> then select Scan Filesystem menu item OR press Ctrl + F key combination.
Step 3.3. Even we can scan a particular folder to get the disk usage details. Select Analyzer menu -> select Scan Folder… menu item OR press Ctrl + O key combination. Also, you can press the “Scan a folder” toolbar button.
Once you press the button or select the menu option, the Application will open the Select Folder dialog to allow you to select the folder to start the disk usage analysis.
Step 3.4. Click on the “Scan a remote folder” toolbar button OR select Analyzer -> then select the “Scan Remote Folder…” menu item to scan the remote folder.
The Application will open the “Connect to Server” dialog to connect to the remote server and the remote folder to start to scan the disk usage.
Step 4. Once the analysis is done, the results will be shown as:
Folder location, Usage in %, Size, and the Contents (number of items in each folder). These details are shown in the tree view. And the graphical representation is also shown in the right side pane.
Step 5. You can change the graphical view by selecting “View as Rings Chart” or “View as Treemap Chart” from the drop-down box, at top of the right-side pane.
Step 6. Move the mouse cursor over each element (ring or bar) in the Graphical view; each element represents the folder. When you move the mouse cursor, it shows the folder & its’ sub-folders details.
We can drill down to the details by clicking on the ring or the bar; relatively the details are shown in the tree view too (left side pane). It is the same as expanding folders & their’ sub-folders from the tree view.
Step 7. Even we can select the devices to include in the filesystem scan. This we need to select through the preferences. Select Edit menu -> then select Preferences to open the preferences dialog to select or deselect the devices to include or exclude in filesystem scan.
The application will open the “Disk Usage Analyzer Preferences” dialog; to allow you to select/deselect the devices. You can not deselect the device which is mounted to the root folder “/”.
Select the “Monitor changes to your home folder” check box to monitor the changes in the home folder. If, something modified in the home folder, the Application will prompt to Rescan the home folder as the content of the home folder has changed.
This way we can analyze the disk usage using the “Disk Usage Analyzer” application.
🙂 Sahida