FOSSPicks

Storage monitor

Parallel Disk Usage

There are lots of tools for looking at disk usage, and we've covered quite a few of them over time in these pages. On the command line, many of us simply resort to piping the output from du into a variety of other tools or use either dutree or ncdu for a more visual approach. The only problem is that all of these tools can take a considerable amount of time to grind through your data before they can produce their output. And you invariably want to change the search after getting the results, which means going through the same process again. Parallel Disk Usage (pdu) has been developed to solve this problem.

Parallel Disk Usage is orders of magnitude faster than any of the alternatives. On modern systems with SSD storage and multiple cores to spare, we barely noticed the difference in output time between the humble ls and pdu. This is despite pdu displaying all the files and directories beneath your chosen destination, complete with lines to show their relationships, their size, and an incredibly useful bar chart that gives you a quick overview of which files and folders are taking the most space. The chart defaults to showing a percentage value for how much of the destination space a specific file or directory is taking. It's a brilliant way to find unexpected resource sinks, such as hidden cache directories or forgotten virtual machines. There are configuration options to change its width, measure blocks rather than bytes, limit trawling depth, and even output the results as JSON. The "parallel" in its name refers to the mechanism that makes pdu so quick – or "blazingly fast," as the project puts it. This mechanism harnesses the parallelized nature of the Rust programming language to make best use of the multiple cores in your CPU, which is why pdu results are delivered with the same speed and agility as ls.

Project Website

https://crates.io/crates/parallel-disk-usage

Running Parallel Disk Usage in your home directories will easily reveal where unknown storage is being used.

File sharing

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • DIY Boombox

    A HiFiBerry HAT, the matching system, and a Raspberry Pi combine with two old speakers to create a contemporary boombox.

  • Mozilla Labs Launches Gaming Initiative

    Platform based on open Web technologies.

  • Free Software Projects

    Free software simulates the population of Mars, which is due to start 30 years from now, gives users an overview of social networks, and keeps the peace at the debating society.

  • Unknown Horizons

    Colonizing new territory, processing raw materials, and trading goods are ingredients for popular strategy games. This genre is served on Linux by the free Unknown Horizons project.

  • FOSSPicks

    This month Graham looks at Mixx, elfcat, Plover, and more!

comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News