I stumbled across the following command while reading this article: du --max-depth=1 --human-readable --total This gives you an estimated indication of your file space usage by folder. Here is some sample output: 12K ./lost+found 2.5M ./bin 84K ./dev 3.3M ./etc 187M ./home 7.6M ./lib 1.0K ./mnt 1.0K ./opt 65M ./proc 65K ./root 2.3M ./sbin 3.0K ./tmp There are plenty of other useful scripts and tidbits in the article.