This post is about the linux commands df and du and will show you how to get information about available diskspace and determine the accumulated size of a directory/folder using terminal on Linux/OS X.

Available disk space

Be aware that there are a few difference in df on OS X and linux.

To get current information about disk usage and availability, you can use this command in terminal:

df -h

If you want the information to be displayed in MB, use this command on OS X:

df -m

On Linux you would use:

df -BM

Size of directory/folder

To get the accumulated size of a directory/folder, you can use this command in terminal:

du -hs /directory/to/get/size/of

And to get the information for multiple file/folders/directories in one go, you can use this command:

du -hs /directory/to/get/sizes/of/files/in/*