Storage Reclaim

Storage Reclaim

Rapid parallel investigation and cleanup of disk storage.

Quick Start

# Top-level overview
du -sh /path/*/ 2>/dev/null | sort -hr | head -20

# Drill into specific directory
du -sh /path/subdir/*/ 2>/dev/null | sort -hr | head -15

Common Space Hogs

1. Rust Build Artifacts (target/)

• Location: Any Rust project root
• Size: 1-10+ GB per project
• Safe to delete: Yes (rebuilds on next cargo build)

# Find all Rust target directories
find ~ -type d -name "target" -exec du -sh {} \; 2>/dev/null | sort -hr | head -20

# Clean specific project
rm -rf /path/to/project/target

# Or use cargo
cd /path/to/project && cargo clean

2. Git Garbage (tmp_pack files)

• Location: .git/objects/pack/tmp_pack_*
• Cause: Interrupted git operations
• Size: Can be gigabytes

# Check for git garbage
git count-objects -vH
# Look for "size-garbage" line

# Remove stale pack files
rm -f .git/objects/pack/tmp_pack_*

# Verify cleanup
git count-objects -vH

3. Node Modules

• Location: node_modules/ in JS projects
• Size: 100MB - 2GB per project

# Find all node_modules
find ~ -type d -name "node_modules" -prune -exec du -sh {} \; 2>/dev/null | sort -hr

# Remove (can reinstall with npm install)
rm -rf /path/to/project/node_modules

4. Python Virtual Environments

• Location: .venv/, venv/, env/
• Size: 100MB - 1GB per environment

find ~ -type d \( -name ".venv" -o -name "venv" -o -name "env" \) -exec du -sh {} \; 2>/dev/null | sort -hr

5. Hidden Temp Directories

• Location: .tmp/, .cache/, __pycache__/
• Often overlooked by du on directories

# Check hidden dirs specifically
du -sh /path/.* 2>/dev/null | sort -hr | head -10

6. Julia Artifacts

• Location: ~/.julia/artifacts/, ~/.julia/compiled/
• Size: Can grow to many GB

du -sh ~/.julia/*/ 2>/dev/null | sort -hr

7. Docker

docker system df
docker system prune -a  # Remove all unused images/containers

8. Homebrew

brew cleanup --dry-run  # Preview
brew cleanup            # Actually clean

Investigation Pattern

1. Start broad: du -sh /path/*/ | sort -hr | head -20
2. Drill into largest: Repeat for subdirectories
3. Check hidden: du -sh /path/.* | sort -hr
4. Git check: git count-objects -vH in any repo
5. Clean safely: Remove build artifacts first (always regeneratable)

Safety Rules

• Always safe to delete: target/, node_modules/, .tmp/, __pycache__/, build/
• Check first: .git/ (might have garbage, might be real history)
• Never delete blindly: Actual source code, .git/objects/pack/*.pack (real packs)
• Regeneratable: Anything that cargo build, npm install, pip install creates

Parallel Investigation

Run multiple du commands simultaneously for faster discovery:

# In parallel (use separate terminal or background)
du -sh ~/project1/*/ | sort -hr &
du -sh ~/project2/*/ | sort -hr &
wait

Source: plurigrid/asi — distributed by TomeVault.