Reduce Disk Usage – cPanel Control Panel

Please note: this applies to the cPanel Control Panel. The xneelo Control Panel instructions can be found here.

1) Determine the cause of excessive disk-usage.

First port of call is to determine what is causing the disk over-usage, i.e. is it unnecessary emails or website files, or both.

In cPanel control panel:

1. Under the “Files” section click “Disk Usage“.
2. You can now see where your disk space is being utilised.
3. Click any of the links for more detailed information on your disk usage for each item.

2) Remove the unwanted files or emails.

Depending on the cause, you can reduce unwanted files or emails or both as follows:

A) Reduce disk over-usage by removing emails.

1. In cPanel under “Email” click “Email Accounts“.
2. For the mailbox in question, click “Manage” > “Free Up Email Storage“
3. On this page, click the “Manage” option for each item and select the option to delete items from this mailbox and then click “Delete Permanently”.
4. Do this for each item for this mailbox e.g. “INBOX”, “Sent”, “spam” and so on.
5. Repeat this process for all mailboxes until you are satisfied you’ve freed up enough disk space.

B) Reduce disk over-usage by removing website files.

Removing unwanted files can be done via FTP or via the File Manager in cPanel.

Caution! Consult your web developer to ensure you are deleting the correct website files and not required website files, as deleting incorrect files/folders can break your website.

Option 1 – To delete websites files via the File Manager, in cPanel: (easiest)

1. In cPanel, find the “Files” section then click “File Manager” to open the File Manager.
2. From here you can remove unwanted/unneeded website folders/files from your hosting account. Again, proceed with caution as deleting incorrect files can break your website.

Option 2 – To delete website files via FTP (Coming soon)