How to Check Inode Usage in your cPanel Account

What is an Inode?

An inode (Index Node) is a data structure containing information about a file in your server or hosting account.

The inode stores all information regarding a file, except its name or the actual data.

Inodes save information such as user and group ownership and file permissions (read, write, execute) and the file's type.

In short, an inode does not store the file contents. It simply points to a specific file or directory.

The number of inodes used on your account indicates the total number of files and folders in your account.

What if I'm Using 100% of My Inode Limits?

If you're using 100% of your inode limits, your account has exceeded the inode usage limits.

You'll be unable to send or receive further emails or add additional files. It's also likely your website will fail to load due to session files.

Below are instructions on how to view your inode usage on your cPanel account, as well as how to reduce usage.

How to View Inode Usage

Log into your cPanel account for Shared, Business, or Reseller hosting. There's a list of usage statistics in the right panel, which includes your inode limits and current usage.

The maximum inodes for our account types are:

Shared Hosting: 250,000

Business Hosting: 600,000

Reseller Hosting: 250,000

How to Reduce Your Inode Usage

Removing redundant files and folders: Using your cPanel FileManager or FTP access to your account, you can remove redundant/unnecessary files and folders from your account.

Removing cache files: Several content management systems (WordPress, Joomla, etc.) will store several cached files, which are used to improve performance and load times on your website. If there are several cache files, you can remove these from your account to free up inodes.

Archiving Emails, clearing SPAM/Junk Emails: Emails also add to your inode usage on your account. Remove SPAM/unsolicited emails and archive important emails to your local machine. If you are using webmail to delete any emails, be sure to delete them from the trash folder so that they are removed from the server entirely.