Running out of disk is more disruptive than people expect, because it stops writes rather than reads.
The symptoms
- Email stops being delivered and senders receive bounces
- The site cannot write sessions, so logins and baskets fail
- Uploads fail
- Databases cannot write, which can appear as data loss
- Backups fail silently
The site often still appears to work, which is why this can go unnoticed for a while.
Finding the space
cPanel's Disk Usage tool breaks the account down by folder. Work down from the largest. The usual answers:
- Email – frequently the largest single item, especially old Sent and Junk folders
- Backups kept on the account – the most common avoidable cause
- Uploads and generated image sizes
- Logs and caches that nothing prunes
- Old copies of the site in subfolders
Clearing it safely
Download and remove backups first – they are usually the quickest large win and the safest thing to delete. Then empty Trash and Junk in mailboxes. Then look at caches.
Do not delete what you do not recognise
Ask before removing anything you are unsure of. Recovering a deleted file costs far more time than the space was worth.
Preventing it
Keep backups off the account, empty Trash periodically, and check disk usage occasionally rather than waiting for something to break.
