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High disk usage with Magento

Updated Jul 16, 2026 · Versión en español

It is common for Magento installations to end up filling the disk. First you need to identify where the space is being used, then set up a scheduled task to free it automatically.

Add the following commands to a cron job running once per hour, replacing USUARIO with your actual username. See how to verify a cron job's output to confirm they run correctly.

High disk usage in /var/session/

Delete sessions older than 7 days:

find /home/USUARIO/public_html/var/session/ -name "sess_*" -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm -f {} \;

If there are a huge number of files, find may be slow. Another option is ls, although in this case you will delete every session (logged-in users will lose their session):

ls -U | head -99999999 | grep sess_ | xargs rm

High disk usage in /pub/media/captcha/base/

Delete captcha images older than one day:

find /home/USUARIO/public_html/pub/media/captcha/base/ -name "*.png" -type f -mtime +1 -exec rm -f {} \;

High disk usage in /var/report/

Delete error reports older than 7 days:

find /home/USUARIO/public_html/var/report/ -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm -f {} \;

High disk usage in /media/catalog/product/cache/

Delete the product image cache older than 7 days (Magento regenerates it on demand):

find /home/USUARIO/public_html/media/catalog/product/cache/ -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm -f {} \;