Ubuntu’s Disk Usage Analyzer
Although it may not be news to many Ubuntu users, I recently discovered the Disk Usage Analyzer tool, which has proved enormously useful. Here’s why I think it’s so great.
For a long time, I either ignored disk-usage concerns or monitored disk space with command-line tools, not because I’m a geek (although that may be part of it) so much as because I didn’t realize such a useful graphical utility existed for that task.
The tiny 16-gigabyte SSD on my new netbook, however, has forced me to streamline my approach to disk maintenance, since with such a tiny hard drive, I don’t have much room for error. The last thing I need is to have my workflow interrupted because I can’t log into my computer due to lack of disk space.
The Disk Usage tool, or Baobab, has been in Ubuntu for a long time. Starting with Ubuntu 9.10, however, the operating system will automatically display a pop-up notification warning users when disk space is getting low, with a button for opening the analyzer tool. This is how I discovered it.
What I like
The utility is pretty impressive. When first opened, it takes a few seconds to scan the hard disk, but then displays drop-down menus, along with a chart, showing how much space is being used by different directories:
In my case, I was able to tell quickly which applications and files were eating up most of my precious megabytes. (It turns out OpenOffice has quite a footprint.)
Impressively, the application can even scan remote file systems mounted over the network, which means I can use it to analyze the disks on servers that don’t have graphical environments installed.
Granted, none of this functionality is new, and it’s not exactly earth-shattering technology. The tool also doesn’t do anything that can’t already be done from the command line, if you’re willing to read some man pages.
Nonetheless, the Disk Analyzer is a well-designed, intuitive and highly useful little utility that makes Ubuntu a pleasure to use. If you haven’t given it a try, you should.
WorksWithU on Identi.ca
WorksWithU on Twitter
WorksWithU's RSS Feed
I think Filelight was first, and better.
Ah I’ve used that little app several times. It quick and dirty and just does what it’s supposed to do. Exactly what I want in an application like that.
Although with 1.5TB to play with I don’t normally worry
p
I too like this little app. Such a nice bit of variety and color added to a very necessary function.
Totally agree. Ever wondered where all those gigs suddenly went only to figure out that those images in “.virtualbox” have been growing (as they are supposed to)? I know I can watch grass grow, while “du -h” runs but this one has all those flashing lights, bells and whistles.
Thanks for the post, Chris.
We are developing Baobab (Disk Usage Analyzer) since 2005 and currently it has a deep integration with Gnome environment. Of course, almost anything can be done from console in Linux, but Gnome was lacking such a tool.
Fabio
[...] Christopher Tozzi, l’abile redattore del portale WorksWithU, ha recentemente pubblicato un interessante articolo su Baobab (Disk Usage Analyzer), evidenziando attraverso i suoi commenti la semplicità d’uso [...]
Why does it show / at 100%?
Jim: because it was at 100%
I had let my disk situation get out of control. Fortunately it was nothing that gparted couldn’t fix (luckily I had some free space in /home that I moved over to /).
[...] Via | WorksWithU [...]