You may have received an  automated email from your web hosting provider that you are using too much disk space.

The subject of the email will be something like  ”Disk Usage Warning critical” and “Disk Usage Warning warn” and the contents of the email will be like this:

The account with the username ‘yoursite’ (yoursite.com), is running out of disk space.

Please remove some files from this account, or ask the administrator to increase your disk quota.

This account has used 97.19% (150.86 Megs) of its allocated disk space.

Some web hosts will disable your site after you exceed your allocated space and do not remove any files.

You also might be seeing signs of impending problems. On the left side of the screen where you log in, the “Stats” area displays something like this, or (even worse), a red bar.

cPanel’s disk usage area is the first place to start looking.

How to Track Down Excessive Disk Usage

Click the link “Disk Space Usage” and look at the graph shown to get an idea where to look first. You will see something like this example:

This one is relatively easy. Here, there is not a lot of email (though be aware that email is a common problem).

Scroll down the page and you can start to use the nice interface to drill down and identify where the problem is. You will see a summary list of directories with how much space files in that directory, plus files in sub-directories are taking up.

Select “Sort directories by: disk usage.”  This will make it easier to drill down to where the files are.  Click the + next to any directory and that directory will expand, like this, where I clicked next to public_html:

Keep clicking the + to continue expanding and looking around.  In this example, I would click on the “wp-content” directory and discover that I had numerous un-used WordPress themes that I could delete.

Note that disk usage numbers are commonly updated once per day. After deleting some files, check back the next day to see if you made an improvement.  Also note that This post updates an older post from 2006 before the current “Disk Space Usage” functionality was in place. It it now easier to solve disk usage problems.

Whether your new web host will handle it all for you, it is wise to back up your site!

To do a full backup, log into cPanel and find the icon labeled “Backup Wizard”

Select the text button labeled “Backup –> ”  The next screen will give you the option of full or partial backup.

Select  ”Full Backup –> ” This will create a zipped copy of your entire site.  Note the text on the screen. This says that this will be a backup for moving to a new server.

On the next screen, you set up where to store the backup file that is created.  For “Backup Destination” keep the default “Home Directory” selection.

For the “Email Address” enter a valid email address and the server will email you when the backup is ready.

When the backup is complete, download the file by clicking on the link in the backup wizard where we left off (refresh your browser). Or you can log into your server via FTP and download it.

If you use FTP, go to your home directory. The file will be named in the form backup-1.27.2011_10-12-22_yoursite.tar.gz  where parts of the filename are separated by underscores. The first part of the filename is the date, the second part is a time stamp. The third is your site account name. “tar.gz” is file extension. (tar.gz means the file is a “tar ball” and  gzipped.)  Download this file to your desktop or laptop computer for a local copy of the file for safekeeping.

Contact your new hosting company for further instructions. Restoring a site from a full backup requires root access.  The important thing is that moving a site from a cPanel host to a cPanel host makes it easy for the hosting company which makes it easy for you.

1. log into cPanel
2. look for File Manager and follow the link
3. you will get a window that says Please select a directory to open: and a number of options
4. select Web Root (public_html/www)
5. look at the far right column. It says Perms These are the file permissions for each file using the standard Unix file permissions numbering system
6. click the permissions for the file you want to change you can edit it right on the web page
7. click “OK”

In a nutshell, cPanel is giving you an easy interface for doing a chmod.
Unix and Unix-type file permissions appear quite cryptic at first but are easy to understand. More info at Linux File Permission Confusion and other sites you can google.

This is because if your script is in, or under, your /public_html/ directory, then it can be executed via a browser by anyone anytime.

Causes other than email accounts might be the problem. In this post, we look at how to delete files through cPanel. We also point out 2 things that cause some people problems so that you can avoid the trouble.

Click the “File Manager” link on your cPanel home page. After clicking the “File Manager” link, click a folder icon to navigate. Click a file name or folder name to view properties and get a list of actions you can perform. When you click a file name, you will see in the upper right of the screen:

• name of your file
• File Type: HTML document text (an example, your file might be different)
• Show File
• Delete File
• Edit File
• Change Permissions
• Rename File
• Copy File
• Move File

Click “Delete File.” Then look down a little ways along the right side of the screen. Find the trash can icon. Click “Click on the trashcan to empty it.”

There are two parts to this that confuse some people. First, the actions are on the top right of the screen. (Many people do not see these.) Second, the additional step of clicking on the trash can is forgotten or not noticed.

The account with the username ‘yoursite’, is running out of disk space.
Please remove some files from this account, or ask the administrator to increase your disk quota.
You have currently used 80.32% of your disk space.

What is it and what do you do?

First, determine which files are using too much space. Log into cpanel and click “Disk usage.” You will see a list of directories, sorted by size, biggest to smallest. This will tell you where the problem is.

Oftentimes, the directory for email (mail/domainname) is to blame. If email is the problem, find out which accounts are using the most disk space. Click the “Mail” link, then click “Manage/Add/Remove Accounts.” This takes you to a page with the title “Mail Account Maintenance.” Just below the list of accounts, there is a link “Show Disk Space Used.” Click this link and cPanel will display how much disk space each account is using. Now you know were to focus your clean-up efforts.

To see how disk space email is using, click the “Mail” link in cPanel. Next page has a list of links (the page is titled “Mail Manager Main Menu“). You will see a list of your existing email addresses. Below the list is a link “Show Disk Space Used.” Clicking this link displays the disk space used and the quota for each email address. Here is where you will find the culprit (the email address that is taking up so much space).

Fortunately, cPanel’s File Manager does the job. Log into cPanel and click the File Manager icon. Navigate to the correct directory (aka, folder) by clicking the little yellow folder icons. Do not open (go to) the directory with all the files. Simply select it by clicking the filename. In the upper right of the screen, you will see a list of operations. The first is “Delete this folder and all files under it.” Click it.

A little lower on the right, you will see a trashcan icon. Click the trashcan to empty the trash (delete the directory and all the files). Be sure you are deleting what you intend to because there is no yes / no option.

If you want the directory you just deleted, create it again using your preferred means (SSH, FTP, cPanel). Note that if the directory required special permissions, remember to do so. Although you are re-creating the directory, the overall process was much faster than other means I tried.