Auto Resize Disk when Downsizing

Resizing to a Smaller Plan

In the event you want to downsize your current Linode plan, there are some extra steps you may need to take. The first thing you need to know when you are downsizing your Linode is that our "Auto Resize Disk" option will not be available to you since the target plan provides less disk space than the plan you are moving from.

Check Your Disk Space

You will want to check your disk space before moving forward. If you run the "disk free" command with the "-h" option on your Linode (df -h) you will get a readout of the disk space used on your linode. For example:

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            992M     0  992M   0% /dev
tmpfs           201M   22M  179M  11% /run
/dev/sda         49G  1.4G   45G   3% /
tmpfs          1003M     0 1003M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs          1003M     0 1003M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           201M     0  201M   0% /run/user/1000

If you are using more space on your current disk than the target plan provides, you will need to delete some files before you resize. We have a community post dedicated to helping you identify unwanted files. If you're not sure how much disk space your new plan will allow, our Pricing Guid has all of the plan statistics laid out.

Resize Your Disk

Once you have confirmed that your new plan provides enough disk space to accommodate all of your files, you need to resize your current disk. We provide a step-by-step guide for resizing your disk to simplify the process. It is important to keep the size of your swap disk in mind here. The total size of all combined disks need to be less than or equal to your new target disk or your Linode resize will not work correctly.

Resize Your Linode Plan

Now that you have resized your disk and confirmed your files will fit, it is time to resize your Linode Plan. Our Guide to Resizing a Linode will help you complete the process.

This should help you in downsizing your Linode. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us again.

Why can't Linode mount the disk if it's a supported file system, check the used space on the disk, and if it's less than the smaller plan's disk space, resize the disks for you? This seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

The df -h results consist of more rows than I can view on Weblish. How do I view all rows?