How to Check and Free Up Disk Space in cPanel

Running out of disk space on your hosting account can cause sudden website issues: WordPress media uploads will fail, incoming emails will bounce, and databases will refuse new entries. Fortunately, cPanel makes it easy to find what is consuming your storage and clear it out safely.

Step 1: Check your total usage

Log into your cPanel account. On the right-hand sidebar under Statistics, look at the Disk Usage progress bar. If your bar is orange or red (above 90%), you should clean up immediately.

Step 2: Use the cPanel Disk Usage Tool

In cPanel under the Files section, click on Disk Usage. This tool provides a clear breakdown of where your storage is allocated:

• public_html (Your website files, plugins, and images)
• MySQL Databases (Database tables and records)
• Mail (All email inboxes, sent folders, and attachments)
• Trash / Logs (cPanel trash and server access logs)

Step 3: Delete old manual backups and error logs

The two most common hidden storage hogs are old manual backup archives and large error log files:

• Old Backup Archives: In File Manager, check your root directory for .tar.gz or .zip backup files created by manual exports or migration plugins (like All-in-One WP Migration or UpdraftPlus). Because Hostinap automatically takes daily offsite snapshots via JetBackup 5, you can safely delete these local archive files.
• Bloated error_log files: Search inside public_html for files named error_log. If a plugin had an issue in the past, this text file can silently grow to several gigabytes. You can safely delete error_log — the server will recreate an empty one automatically.

Step 4: Clean up email storage

In cPanel under Email, open Email Disk Usage. Select your main mailbox from the dropdown menu to see which folders contain the most storage (typically Sent or Trash). You can use the Actions menu to delete messages older than 1 year or delete emails containing attachments over 20MB.

Step 5: Clean WordPress cache & optimize databases

If you run a WordPress site:

• Empty your caching plugin's cache folder (e.g., in LiteSpeed Cache, click Purge All).
• Open phpMyAdmin from cPanel, select your database, scroll to the bottom, check all tables, and choose Optimize table from the dropdown to reclaim unused database overhead.

What to do if you still need more space

If you've cleaned your unneeded files and simply have a large, growing website with extensive media libraries, consider upgrading your plan to Business Hosting or adding dedicated storage capacity. Our team can upgrade your plan instantly with zero downtime.