Skip to main content
Nublue

Disk space management

Last updated:

A “Disk Full” error is a nightmare for any website owner. It can crash your databases, stop your emails from sending, and take your entire site offline. But before you pay for an expensive storage upgrade, there is a good chance your server is just holding onto “digital junk.” In this guide, we’ll have a few tips on how to identify and clean your disk space via Plesk.

Where is my space going?

Plesk makes it easy to see exactly what is eating your storage.

  • Go to Websites & Domains and check the Statistics tab on the right. This gives you a colour coded breakdown of Web files, Databases, and Mail.
  • For a more granular view, click on Disk Usage (under the Statistics tab). This will show you exactly which folders (like /httpdocs, /logs, or /backup) are the largest.

The Common Culprits

Usually, it’s not your website files that cause a sudden spike; it’s the “hidden” data:

  • Old Backups: Local backups are convenient, but they take up massive amounts of space. If you have five versions of your site stored locally, you’re using 5x the space you need.
  • Massive Log Files: If your site has errors or high traffic, logs can grow to several gigabytes over time.
  • Overstuffed Mailboxes: If your customers use the server for email, old “Sent” items and “Trash” folders with large attachments are often the silent killers of disk space.
  • Temporary Files: Occasionally, failed updates or crashed processes leave “temp” files behind that never got deleted.

How to Clean Up

Below are a few tips to clean up and keep your storage clean:

  • Purge Old Backups: Go to Tools& Settings > Backup Manager. Check for old or redundant backups. Pro-Tip: Move your backups to Remote Storage (like Amazon S3, Google Drive, or Dropbox) via the Plesk extensions. This keeps your server disk 100% free for your website files.
  • Manage your Logs: Go to Websites & Domains > Logs > Log Rotation. Don’t let logs sit forever. Enable Log Rotation and set the conditions to “By size” (e.g., 100MB) or “By time” (e.g., Daily). You can also check the box to “Compress log files” to save even more space while keeping the data available for troubleshooting. If you have manually setup logs, so Magento logs, or even WordPress debug log, it maybe worth while taking a look at our guide here, which provides steps on how to manage manually setup logs like this.
  • Empty Your Mail Trash: Encourage your users to clear their “Trash” and “Spam” folders. In Plesk, you can also set Mailbox Quotas to prevent a single email account from filling up the entire server’s hard drive.
  • Optimise Databases: Over time, databases develop “overhead” (empty space that isn’t being used). Go to Databases and click Check and Repair. This can often slim down a bulky database and improve performance at the same time.
  • Remove Unused Apps & Staging Sites: Check your WP Toolkit. If you have old “test” or “staging” versions of your site that you no longer use, delete them. A forgotten staging site is just a security risk and a waste of space.

Was this article helpful?