What is the output of df -h? It's hard to guess what could be wrong without some more data.
The last 5% are by default reserved for the root user, so that's a possibility.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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Sistema de ficheiros Tamanho Uso Livre Uso% Montado em
tmpfs 1,4G 1,8M 1,4G 1% /run
efivarfs 128K 14K 110K 12% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
/dev/sda3 46G 13G 31G 29% /
tmpfs 6,8G 0 6,8G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5,0M 16K 5,0M 1% /run/lock
/dev/sda6 9,1G 4,2M 8,6G 1% /tmp
/dev/sda2 113M 6,2M 107M 6% /boot/efi
/dev/sdb1 458G 64G 371G 15% /home
/dev/sda5 32G 9,6G 21G 32% /var
tmpfs 1,4G 132K 1,4G 1% /run/user/1000
I don't see any partition full.
Yeah, those aren't full from a filesystem perspective. What exactly are you doing when it's saying it's full, and what is the exact message. Some things might have quotas independent of the space on the filesystem.
I got my first warning when trying to download some large files and at some point the browser just returned a message saying the download was aborted for not having enough space available. Nothing else.
After running a disk scan, as I know the 500GB HDD is essentially empty, is when I find out the Thunderbird folder is full. And somehow it is causing the system to flag the entire disk has full.
This is the general use computer of the house and there are more users on the system but I have the largest amount of files on it as I'm the primary user.
What is "a disk scan"? Can you either copy the input/output of the command or take screenshots? This is too vague to be of much use for debugging.
df -h returns the following
Sistema de ficheiros Tamanho Uso Livre Uso% Montado em
tmpfs 1,4G 1,8M 1,4G 1% /run
efivarfs 128K 14K 110K 12% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
/dev/sda3 46G 13G 31G 29% /
tmpfs 6,8G 0 6,8G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5,0M 12K 5,0M 1% /run/lock
/dev/sdb1 458G 64G 371G 15% /home
/dev/sda6 9,1G 400K 8,6G 1% /tmp
/dev/sda5 32G 9,5G 21G 32% /var
/dev/sda2 113M 6,2M 107M 6% /boot/efi
tmpfs 1,4G 136K 1,4G 1% /run/user/1000
/home has 371G free smartctl is not returning errors on the drive has well
Did you check dmesg for errors? It might be smart to verify it isn't a hardware issue.
Could you post screenshots?
the dmesg output is simply huge running the command threw me a slew of messages can you point to what I should be looking at?
Do you see any red ones?
No reds
You are probably good then
You haven't mentioned your distro. Are you using systemd-homed? There are some footguns there that can manifest like this.
As another poster mentioned, btrfs quotas or subvolume allocation could be a favtor as well.
I always leave something to be said when I post... added to the post. Thank you.
I'm running Mint.
Yes. Although recently I started getting errors with downloads, with warning of not having disk space.
I realise this is an older thread, but it could be caused by deleted files not being released by the application - a reboot or killing said application would help. Can be checked with
sudo lsof | grep deleted
It can also just be corrupt metadata about a file where a small file is seen as taking up some ludicrous amount of storage. This thought was triggered by you mentioning the thuderbird sent directory. Inspect the files there.
I wouldn't bother with a HDD in the future. They are slow and SSDs will last for years.
~~Anyways, could you post the output of df? It would help significantly with troubleshooting~~ Never mind, I missed your comment
With the memory chips getting the sharp uptick they are going through right now? Pass. Speed is not crucial for me. I don't do any hardcore gaming nor run some speed critical apps. HDD's cover my necessities.
Check inodes df -ih. Do you use btrfs or zfs?
Sistema de ficheiros Inodes IUso ILivr UsoI% Montado em
tmpfs 1,7M 1,2K 1,7M 1% /run
efivarfs 0 0 0 - /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
/dev/sda3 3,0M 750K 2,2M 26% /
tmpfs 1,7M 1 1,7M 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 1,7M 7 1,7M 1% /run/lock
/dev/sda6 597K 41 597K 1% /tmp
/dev/sda2 0 0 0 - /boot/efi
/dev/sdb1 30M 133K 29M 1% /home
/dev/sda5 2,1M 94K 2,0M 5% /var
tmpfs 348K 136 348K 1% /run/user/1000
Here is the output. I don't see anything taxed.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong but doesn't that show that you only have a 30 megabytes of space?
df -h returns this
Sistema de ficheiros Tamanho Uso Livre Uso% Montado em
tmpfs 1,4G 1,8M 1,4G 1% /run
efivarfs 128K 14K 110K 12% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
/dev/sda3 46G 13G 31G 29% /
tmpfs 6,8G 0 6,8G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5,0M 12K 5,0M 1% /run/lock
/dev/sdb1 458G 64G 371G 15% /home
/dev/sda6 9,1G 320K 8,6G 1% /tmp
/dev/sda5 32G 9,5G 21G 32% /var
/dev/sda2 113M 6,2M 107M 6% /boot/efi
tmpfs 1,4G 140K 1,4G 1% /run/user/1000
Looks fine to me as well, so you are using ext4 and not btrfs?
Yes. Still haven't tried it.