Alternatives to du

[alan]

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, alan wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Matthew Miller wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 11:10:28AM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
>>>> I have a need to determine the amount of space used in a particular
>>>> folder, but don't really want to use du because of the beating my RAID
>>>> array takes.  (Usually 6 hours or so on a RAID 5 for a folder with about
>>>> 350GB of data)  Are there any other similar tools out there that don't
>>>> require smacking around my hard drives to get the data and don't take
>>>> hours to run?
>>> Where else would such a program get the data? Elves?
>> 
>> 
>> Man am I cranky this morning. Sorry for the tone. But the point stands. :)
>
> That sounds like an indicator of a bigger problem.  On an unraided 330GB 
> drive, du takes a fraction of that to complete. (I would have to run a test 
> to get actual times.)  Sounds like there is something else going on.

For 826Gigs, it took a little under 4 minutes.

Is all 350gigs in a single directory?  If you have 10,000+ files (not 
certain on the actual number) in a single directory, file access slows 
significantly.  (Under ext2/ext3.  I tend not to use other file systems 
for my large mega collections of crap.)

-- 
"Invoking the supernatural can explain anything, and hence explains nothing."
                   - University of Utah bioengineering professor Gregory Clark