Finding the largest files is extremely useful especially when you you’re low on disk space and want to free it up.
The best way to find the largest files on your Linux system is to use the command line.
Actually there is no simple command to list the largest files in Linux.
However, you can easily find the largest files, using a combination of the several simple commands.
Find The Largest Files in Linux
Run the combination of the following commands to find the largest files on your Linux system, beginning from the <DIR> directory (change <DIR> to whatever directory you need), and list top 10 of them.
$ find <DIR> -mount -type f -ls 2> /dev/null | sort -rnk7 | head -10 | awk '{printf "%10d MB\t%s\n",($7/1024)/1024,$NF}'
Find 10 largest files, starting from ‘/’ (root)
$ find / -mount -type f -ls 2> /dev/null | sort -rnk7 | head -10 | awk '{printf "%10d MB\t%s\n",($7/1024)/1024,$NF}'
106 MB /var/lib/mysql/ibdata1
94 MB /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
41 MB /scripts/20130206-015833.tar.gz
41 MB /scripts/20130206-004839.tar.gz
41 MB /scripts/20130206-130400.tar.gz
41 MB /scripts/20130206-000442.tar.gz
41 MB /scripts/20130206-132019.tar.gz
41 MB /root/20130208-133954.tar.gz
33 MB /var/log/messages-20130303
32 MB /var/lib/rpm/Packages
Find 10 largest files, starting from ‘/home’
$ find /home -mount -type f -ls 2> /dev/null | sort -rnk7 | head -10 | awk '{printf "%10d MB\t%s\n",($7/1024)/1024,$NF}'
3007 MB /home/user/Desktop/share/linux-65835.iso
448 MB /home/user/Pictures/Turkey/SAM_4590.AVI
266 MB /home/user/Pictures/Turkey/SAM_4588.AVI
173 MB /home/user/Camera/VID_20130909_120713.mp4
152 MB /home/user/Camera/VID_20130909_115427.mp4
133 MB /home/user/Camera/VID_20130909_210904.mp4
133 MB /home/user/Pictures/Paris/VID_20130928_182431.mp4
131 MB /home/user/Pictures/Turkey/SAM_4597.AVI
129 MB /home/user/Pictures/Turkey/SAM_4641.AVI
127 MB /home/user/Desktop/tmp/Camera/VID_20130911_164440.mp4