Disk space is shared on UNIX systems.

UNIX users usually don’t see the physical disks, nor are users typically aware of how much disk space might be available, until they get a message from their system administrator saying that disk space is low.

On UNIX, disk space is shared among all the users on the system. So if someone else puts a giant file in their home directory, it may affect the amount of space left in your home directory. When disks are nearly full, files need to be removed, compressed, archived, or moved to another disk.

If one disk becomes filled up, there may still be room on another disk. When you get a message that /home is filled up, you might be able to move files from /home to another filesystem (for example, /projects) and that will help open up space on /home. But it’s better to just tell your system administrator, since moving files around just to clear up disk space isn’t the best policy.

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