How to reduce your disk usage

If your domain exceeds its allocated disk space quota, we will send you a monthly email warning, providing you an opportunity to reduce disk usage to avoid unnecessary charges for over-usage.

Reduce Disk Usage:

1. Investigate the cause of overuse

Refer to our Disk Usage tool in konsoleH to investigate which folders within your hosting account are causing the disk over-usage. Oftentimes the main cause of excessive disk usage is email. This tool includes the option to bulk delete email for a specific time frame.

2. Remove unnecessary  files

Emails, logfiles and website backups are common causes of excessive disk usage.

The konsoleH Disk Cleanup Tool allows you to specify rules for clearing out emails in the trash and spam folders and to manage your web log retention thresholds for your domain. The cleanup rules can be set individually per domain or for all domains within your account.

In each hosting package, mail is found in the users directory, and log files in www_logs.  If either of these directories or a sub-folder becomes too large, check if the problem is caused by:

a. Email

Email accumulating on the server can lead to both disk- and inode-overusage i.e. both large volumes and large numbers of emails. If your email is set up to use IMAP (the default setting), then all mail stays on the server and adds to your disk usage. Excess email is often caused by

• Spambucket or trash folders that need clearing
  • Delete this mail, either
    • within your mail programme (e.g. Outlook)
    • via the Disk Cleanup Tool
    • via Webmail, via the File Manager, or
    • using FTP
• Catch-all mailbox that is ignored
  • Access this catch-all mailbox and delete the mail via Webmail or FTP. Reconsider if a catch-all is needed. If the catch-all has been forwarded on, or it isn’t necessary to view the individual mail, the entire mailbox with contents can be deleted via the Manage Accounts Tool.
• Forwarding on mailboxes to external addresses is not being cleared out.
  • Delete the mailbox and replace it with an alias which will forward email to the external address, without keeping a duplicate copy in the original mailbox. Use the Manage Accounts Tool
• Large amounts of legitimate mail in the Inbox of your mail programme, or saved in a subfolder
  • Use your mail client (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird) or File Manager to back up or archive your mail, and then delete it from the server. Remember to empty the trash after deleting.
    • Back up Outlook mail
    • Back up Thunderbird (set the folder to archive to your local drive, not the IMAP folder.

b. Log Files

Each log file represents one day of browsing to your website. It is these files that are used to generate your Web Statistics, but excessive files can be downloaded and stored elsewhere.

c. Backup Files

If your site has been restored from a backup via the konsoleH Restore Tool, then a directory called backup_<date> may be left over, which should be deleted. This can be done via FTP or using the File Manager within konsoleH

CMS’s like WordPress or Joomla may use backup extensions or plugins which place backup files in your hosting account. These files, which are usually recognizable as .zip, .gzip, and .tar.gz, can be downloaded via FTP and stored elsewhere, and then deleted from your account.

3. Upgrade to a higher Web Hosting package if necessary

Upgrading to a higher package will provide you with a bigger disk space quota. The various packages and their quotas are available on our product information pages. You can upgrade your package via the konsoleH control panel.

We calculate your most cost-effective option

Even if you don’t upgrade to a higher Web Hosting package, our automated system will calculate the most cost-effective option for you.