How to Check Disk Space on Raspberry Pi Quickly

To check disk space on a Raspberry Pi, open the terminal and use the df -h command to see available and used space in a human-readable format. For detailed folder sizes, use du -sh /path/to/folder.

Syntax

The main command to check disk space is df. Use -h to show sizes in a human-friendly way (like MB or GB). For folder sizes, du is used with -s for summary and -h for human-readable output.

• df -h: Shows disk usage of all mounted filesystems.
• du -sh /path/to/folder: Shows total size of a specific folder.

bash

df -h

du -sh /path/to/folder

Example

This example shows how to check the disk space on your Raspberry Pi's root filesystem and the size of the home directory.

bash

df -h /
du -sh /home/pi

Output

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root        15G  4.5G  9.7G  32% /

1.2G    /home/pi

Common Pitfalls

One common mistake is running df without the -h option, which shows sizes in bytes and is hard to read. Another is forgetting to specify the folder path with du, which then shows sizes for all subfolders and can be overwhelming.

Also, running these commands without proper permissions might not show all data.

bash

df

du -sh

# Correct usage:
df -h

du -sh /home/pi

Quick Reference

Command	Description
df -h	Show disk space usage of all mounted filesystems in human-readable format
df -h /	Show disk space usage of root filesystem
du -sh /path/to/folder	Show total size of a specific folder in human-readable format
df -i	Show inode usage (number of files)
lsblk	List block devices and their mount points

Key Takeaways

Use df -h to quickly see disk space in a readable format.

Use du -sh /folder to check the size of specific folders.

Always include -h for human-readable output.

Check permissions if disk space info seems incomplete.

Use lsblk to view storage devices and mount points.