Hard disk space disapeared

[dadakrpa]

Hello

I just encountered something strange and do not know where to start to resolve it.

I have a Dell Inspiron 7000 series laptop with a 512 solid state HD formatted with the ext4 file system. There was 45Gb free space.

Suddenly programs complained not being able to save things anymore and when I looked the free space showed now as zero. I deleted some files and the freed-up space showed in Dolphin but while looking at it, it counted back to zero.

The only folder where the total free space still showed as 45Gb is the Trash folder. Everywhere else the space is Zero.

After restarting the system I was able to delete things and the free space was not swallowed. Still the space that disapeared earlier did not come back. Only when opening the (Empty) Trash folder still the amount of 45Gb shows.

Does anyone have an idea what happened? A solution? Or some guidance of where I can look to resolve this?

Dada

[leszek]

So just to be sure you checked with the command

Code:

df -h

in a terminal? (or used kdiskfree?)

Or did you use another application?
Perhaps the command line app ncdu can also help you determine what is eating up your space.

[dadakrpa]

Thank you Leszek,

I tried df -h which also tells there is very little space. Installed kdiskfree, which I think gives the same information.

ncdu is really nice for checking what is using space. Happy to know this simple program exists!

However I don't see what ate the 45Gb Could something be wrong with the drive?

One thing it tells about the home/user1 directory: "Total disk usage: 280.7 GiB Apparent size: 287.2 GiB Items: 83490"
7Gb difference, not sure what it is though it's much smaller than the total missing amount.

That said about the root directory it tells:

--- / -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
. 388.3 GiB [##########] /home
. 34.9 GiB [ ] /var
5.9 GiB [ ] /usr
887.6 MiB [ ] /lib
351.5 MiB [ ] /opt
178.6 MiB [ ] /boot
etc
etc
"Total disk usage: 430.6 GiB Apparent size: 430.6 GiB Items: 765432" Usage and apparent usage the same
(home includes a second user which makes up the difference in the home directory)

However the partition manager reports /dev/sda2 size as 463 and used 430, so it seems there is 33Gb available. Then why is the system thinking there is just 2.3Gb (what I freed up later)? Why would the trash folder still report 45Gb and any other folder selected in Dolphin 2.3Gb?? And why could it suddenly disappear?

[leszek]

The trash seems to only be showing the free space available according to the max allowed for trash in the settings of dolphin. So it does not care about "real" available disk space.

As to why your home is suddenly so full I can only guess that maybe you downloaded something in the background or a file was creating a large log file.
Best to analyze with ncdu in the /home folder.

[dadakrpa]

Hello,

That solves indeed the trash reporting a different value.

Still the rest is a mystery to me. Just the day before I moved many Gbs to an external HD to free up space. I have not done anything that could have added more than a few Mbs. Also Gparted shows there is 33Gb available on that volume.
Maybe time to back up and reinstall as few other things (like drag and drop files to websites) stopped working a while ago.

Will Maui as is continue to receive security updates?

Like so many others, I found it the best distro out there. Install, add dropbox, VPN and get to work, no need tweak anything. Really pity if it's true that it won't continue. Still if security updates will continue for a while I would stick with it a bit longer.

Thanks for the help! As I am travelling right now I will just move more stuff to an external HD to make space and leave the mystery for later or let a reinstall resolve it. All seems stable...

Dada

[leszek]

Will Maui as is continue to receive security updates?

Yes Maui will receive Updates until Ubuntu 16.04 support ends.

[dadakrpa]

Will Maui as is continue to receive security updates?

Yes Maui will receive Updates until Ubuntu 16.04 support ends.

Great that's till 2021, I am sure an other great Plasma distro will come out before that :-)

Thanks again to all the developers and maintainers who worked on the Maui distro.