Video summary
The video begins by addressing the common issue of limited hard drive space on Linux systems and introduces practical methods to identify where storage is being consumed. The presenter first uses the `df` command with the `-H` flag to display partition usage in human-readable gigabytes rather than raw bytes, providing a clear overview of available versus used space. He then suggests an alternative tool called `ydu`, which offers a visual representation of disk usage, though he notes its availability depends on specific repositories and distributions. Once the current storage status is established, the focus shifts to the home directory's cache folder, where applications store temporary data that can often be safely removed without affecting system stability.
Inside the cache directory, the presenter demonstrates how to analyze file sizes using the `du` command combined with sorting techniques to prioritize cleanup efforts. He highlights a specific challenge in organizing these results: standard numerical sorting fails when dealing with mixed units like kilobytes and gigabytes unless the `-h` flag is used alongside the sort options. By piping the output of `du -h` into `sort -rh`, he successfully arranges folders by size, revealing that his web browser cache alone consumes nearly eight gigs. This step-by-step analysis allows users to identify large directories associated with specific applications, such as thumbnail generators or unused desktop environment components like Tracker 3 from GNOME, which can be deleted if those services are no longer in use.
The tutorial concludes with a strategy for safely removing old files without deleting critical data needed by active programs. The presenter uses the `find` command to locate and delete files older than 365 days within specific cache directories, effectively reclaiming several gigabytes of space on his laptop. He emphasizes that while clearing an entire cache folder is generally safe—though it may cause websites to load slightly slower or require thumbnail regeneration—it is wise to selectively remove data from applications no longer used, such as old test files for mind games. Ultimately, the video encourages users to regularly audit their system caches, starting with the largest folders first, to maintain a healthy disk environment and ensure they always have sufficient free space available for daily operations.
Read the full video transcript
Hello and welcome to a video from
filmsbycchrist.com. That's Chris with
the K. I'm Chris with the K. Today we're
going to be clearing out some old files.
You may not need anymore. Clear up space
on your hard drive. Let's see how much
space we have on our hard drive. We're
going to start off with the DF command.
If we just type DF, it's going to list
our all our partitions and drives and
how much being used, but showing us here
in bytes. I don't want to see bytes. I
want to see human readable. So, we're
going to run the same command with -H
for human readable. And here now it's
showing us in gigs a little bit easier.
You can see my main partition here, my
root partition. I've used almost 80% of
it. You can see how much space is free,
how much I've used, and how much uh
total I have. Another great tool, if you
have it installed, it may be in your
repository depending on your DRO uh
disk. But with a Y, it will give you a
nice little visual here like this, and I
can quickly see how much space is on my
root directory. Now that we know how
much space we have, let's go ahead and
see what we can clear out. I'm in my
home directory. I'm going to move into a
directory called cache. Uh and remember,
a dot file, that means it's a hidden
file. by default you can't see this but
it's there even if you don't see it in
your visual or if you list out things
and you're not listing hidden files you
wouldn't see it but cd into cache in
your home directory and here we can list
out files this is where applications
will store cache stuff that it's going
to use but isn't necessarily you could
delete everything in here and you'll
probably be okay but certain things may
need to regenerate like if you're using
a file browser uh that generates
thumbnails you may have to regenerate
thumbnails uh one of the biggest ones in
here usually is for me is my web browser
and clearing that out. Not going to, but
it might log you out of sites. Uh, sites
might take a little longer to load the
next time you go to them because they
aren't cached anymore. So, you may not
want to delete everything here. Let's
have a look at what's in here, how much
is being used. I'm going to use the du
command. Uh, du will list everything
out. But again, it's not showing it in
human readable format. That's, you know,
we want to say du-h.
Now, we get gigabytes and megabytes and
kilobytes. You can see I have 28 gigs
worth of stuff in here. Uh, but let's go
ahead and clean that up a little bit
more. We're going to run that same
command. We're going to say d-max-
depth
and I'm going to say equals 1. This is
going to calculate everything up the
same, but not display anything more than
one folder deep. So, it's just going to
show me my current folders and how big
they are. So, there you go. I can break
this down, but they're not in numeric
order. It would be really helpful if it
was in numeric order. Of course, I can
pipe this into sort, but that's not
going to really work like I want it to,
right? uh because it doesn't know, you
know, it's just going alpha numerically.
And now if we look at man and we say
sort, we look at the man page for this.
In the past, I've talked about the dash
n option, which is to sort numerically,
but we don't want to just sort
numerically. That'd be fine if we were
just going bytes, but since we're using
kilobytes and megabytes and gigabytes,
we want to again use the -h option for
human numeric sorting. So now we run our
du command and we pipe it into sort. We
give it the -h option. Now, it's going
to run through that and list all out. We
got our total at the bottom here
because, of course, that's going to be
the biggest number because it's
everything added up. But I can see right
here, Brave browser is using up almost
eight gigs. I probably could clear some
of that out, but I'm just going to leave
it for now on this drive. But you can
see I have this thumbnails folder. The
thumbnails folder again is probably uh
thumbnails that were generated for my
file browser. Uh I also have this one
here, this track three. That seems a
little suspicious. Again, you could
delete everything in this cache folder
and you'll probably be okay. Again, you
might get logged out of websites. Things
might load a little bit slower next time
you go to them, but it's not going to
probably hurt anything. But I can go in
like uh this Froid CL. That's uh Froid
um for uh your phone. This application
allows me to search the database stuff
and install stuff on my phone for it. I
don't really use that anymore. I use my
own scripts and one and a half gigs is
kind of huge for that. It's probably
caching apps that I installed. I can
just remove that, right? No, no harm, no
foul there. Uh, and then this tracker 3,
that sounds a little suspicious. I had
to look that up. Uh, that's part of the
Gnome Desktop uh, functionality. It's
like their search tool and it's caching
stuff. I don't use the Gnome Desktop. I
haven't in years. It's quite possible
that I loaded something up that that
uses the Gnome Desktop. Or maybe I
started up Gnome Desktop once. I haven't
done a fresh install in years. Anytime I
get a new computer, I just clone my hard
drive over to it. So, there's probably
stuff lingering here. But since I'm not
using them, I feel pretty comfortable
just deleting that directory. Um, but
something like the thumbnails here. What
do we do with that? If it generate
thumbnail, if I delete that, yeah, so
might have to regenerate thumbnails, but
I may not want it to. But let me go
ahead and just go in here. And I think
it'd be safe for me to say if I haven't
generated the thumbnail in the last
year, maybe it can be removed. So, while
I'm in here, I can say this. This is
going to say find dash type for file
because we're going to ignore
directories. Not that it really matters
in this. Uh, and we're going to say time
plus 365 days. So, it's going to list
anything that is older or created more
than 365 days ago. That's great. But
again, let's let's uh let's do du-h I
forget the number. What was it like two
and a half gigs? Oh, there's almost
almost four gigs worth of stuff in here.
Uh, so what I'm going to do is I'm going
to run that find command and I'm going
to say dash delete. Again, be careful
using this in many cases, but this is
going to delete all those files that are
more than 365 days old. Do that. And
then we will run our U command. And
look, now we're less than a gig. So,
I've cleared out some space, you know,
and my current hard drive on my desktop
here is a terabyte, but my laptops only
have 256 uh gigabytes. So, I'm always uh
kind of close. I try to always keep at
least 20 gigs free, but uh you know,
sometimes it gets close and I got to go
through usually there's some video files
I don't need on there anymore, but this
also helps. I could clear out yesterday
I think I cleared out like 20 gigs or
something on my laptop doing this. So,
just go through that cache file.
Anything that looks like it's not
important that you don't use anymore,
maybe see the name of a program you
don't use anymore, you could probably
remove it. Again, if you delete
everything in here, you'd probably be
okay. Uh, but of course it's always
helpful to start with the biggest
folders first. So like this
and you go, okay, well Brave, I'm gonna
delete that. Pup tier I do use that, but
I don't want to delete that. Mozzilla, I
do use Firefox as a test web browser or
sometimes some websites don't like the
fact that I'm using Brave, even if I
turn off the shields. I'll have to pop
into Mozilla. Uh, Firefox, Thunderbird's
uh, pretty big here, but I'm going to
leave that for now. Google, I don't even
know. I You know what?
I don't know what that is. It's gone
now. I don't know if that's something
from years and years ago. I've tried to
de Google my life as much as possible.
Like mine tests. I don't play mind test.
I've loaded it up before to play with my
kids. I can remove that. So, you can
clear out a lot of stuff. Anything in
here you see that you don't use
regularly, you can clear out and free up
space in your hard drive. I hope you
found this useful. I hope you uh learned
something new. with some of these
commands. Uh, you know, uh, before I
started doing this, I don't think I
realized the, uh, sort-H option for
sort. I, like I said, I've done numeric
before. Um, I'm sure I've probably used
that before and just didn't remember it.
Uh, but if you learned something new,
let me know in the comments below. I
thank you for watching. Visit
filmsby.com. That's Chris the K. Have a
great day.