How to Free Up Disk Space on Your Plesk Hosting

Your Noiz hosting plan includes a set amount of disk space, and disk space used beyond it is billed per GB each month. This guide shows you where the space in a Plesk subscription usually goes and how to get it back.

Last reviewed: 3 November 2026, against the current Plesk Obsidian release. This guide is written for Noiz hosting and is kept current against Plesk. It complements, and does not replace, the official Plesk documentation linked below.

Official Documentation Reference

• Viewing Statistics (Plesk Customer’s Guide): what the disk usage chart covers.
• Uploading, Downloading, and Removing Backups (Plesk Customer’s Guide)
• WP Toolkit: Backing Up and Restoring (Plesk Customer’s Guide)
• Archive items manually (Microsoft Support): archiving mail to a .pst file in classic Outlook.

Before you start

• Find out what is using the space first. How to Check Disk and Bandwidth Usage in Plesk shows you the Statistics page, which splits your usage into websites, mail, databases, logs and backups.
• Most of what follows deletes data for good, so download a copy of anything you might need again.

What counts toward your disk space

Everything stored in your Plesk subscription counts:

• Website files, including uploads, old copies of the site, caches and logs.
• Databases, at their full size.
• Mail in every mailbox, including Trash, Junk, Spam and Sent.
• Backups you create in Plesk and keep in server storage.

Clear out old mail

Mail is the most common reason a subscription runs over its disk space. A message stops counting only once it has left the server: deleted and gone from Trash, or moved to your own computer.

Delete large and old messages

1. In your mail program or in webmail, sort each folder by size to find the largest messages, and by date to find the oldest. Attachments usually take up most of the space, and Sent keeps a copy of everything you send.
2. Delete what you no longer need. Deleted messages go to Trash, where they still count.
3. Empty Trash, and Junk or Spam once you have checked them.

Noiz mailboxes are normally set up as IMAP, so your mail program, webmail and phone all show the same mailbox on the server: deleting a message in any of them deletes the server copy. See How to Delete Email Messages in Mozilla Thunderbird and, for phones, How to Read, Send and Delete Email on Android.

Trash, Junk and Spam are also cleared automatically: messages in them are deleted after 90 days, as set out in the Noiz Acceptable Use Policy. Emptying them yourself frees the space sooner.

Move old mail to your own computer

To keep old mail without it counting, move it into an archive on your own computer. Mail moved out of the server mailbox no longer takes up your disk space. The archive then exists only on that computer, so make sure your backups include it.

• Thunderbird: create a folder under Local Folders and move old mail into it. Local Folders live in your Thunderbird profile on your computer, as explained in server folders vs Local Folders. Use your own folder rather than the Archive button, which can file mail in an Archives folder on the server, depending on the account’s settings.
• Classic Outlook for Windows: archive old mail to an Outlook Data File (.pst) with Microsoft’s guide Archive items manually. Outlook’s Archive button does something else: it moves mail to an Archive folder in the mailbox, which does not reduce your mailbox size. For a very large mailbox, see also Why Outlook Mailboxes Over 50 GB May Cause Corruption Issues.

Afterwards, check in webmail that the old mail has gone from the server.

Remove backups stored on the server

Each backup you create in Plesk and keep in server storage counts toward your disk space.

• Delete old backups: in the Backup Manager, select the ones you no longer need and click Remove. This is permanent, so download a copy first if you want one.
• Keep fewer: if a scheduled backup stores its files on the server, have it keep fewer old backups, and tick Exclude log files to make each one smaller.
• Store them off the server: send backups to remote storage over FTP(S), SFTP or Dropbox. They then take up none of your disk space, and they survive a problem with the server itself. Plesk Backup Overview compares the options.

Tidy up website files

Look for files your sites no longer use, in the Plesk File Manager (Files in the sidebar) or over FTP:

• Old copies of the site: a folder kept from before a redesign or a move, a zip or tar.gz of the site, or a staging copy you have finished with.
• Unused uploads: large videos, installers, PDFs or images that nothing links to any more.
• Cache folders: clear these from the plugin’s or application’s own settings; the cache rebuilds itself as visitors arrive.
• Log files: Plesk normally rotates and compresses each site’s web server logs, so they seldom grow large. Logs an application writes inside the site’s folders, such as a WordPress debug.log, are not rotated and keep growing until you delete them.

WordPress sites

• The media library is often the largest part of a WordPress site: see How to Clean Up Your WordPress Media Library.
• Backup plugins usually keep their archives inside wp-content, where they count as website files. Delete old ones, or have the plugin send its backups to remote storage.
• WP Toolkit backups (WordPress > Back up / Restore in Plesk) are kept in the wordpress-backups folder of your home directory; delete old ones on the same screen. A restore point left after an update also takes up space until you remove it, as Plesk’s WP Toolkit guide explains.

Slim down databases

• Delete databases you no longer use, such as one left by an old site or a test install. Export a copy first, then see How to Delete a Database in Plesk for the checks that stop a live site breaking.
• Clear out data you no longer need, such as old post revisions, spam comments or log tables, then optimise the tables in phpMyAdmin. Deleting rows alone does not give the space back; optimising does.

When the disk figure updates

The disk figure in Plesk and in the client area is refreshed on a schedule, so space you free shows up after the next refresh rather than straight away. In the client area it is on your hosting service’s page (see How to Manage Your Hosting Services).

The monthly charge for extra disk space uses the reading on the last day of the month. To bring a month’s figure down, finish your clean-up a few days before the month ends. Billing and Overage Charges sets out how the charge is worked out.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: the figure has not gone down. Wait for the next refresh. If it still has not moved, check that Trash is empty and that no old backups remain in server storage.
• Symptom: deleted messages stay in the folder, crossed out. Your mail program marks messages as deleted instead of moving them to Trash, and they stay on the server until the folder is compacted. See when deleted messages stay in the folder.
• Symptom: the mailbox is as full as before after a big delete in your mail program. The program is probably set up with POP and leaves copies on the server, so delete the messages in webmail too.

If you still need more space

If your sites and mail genuinely need more space than your plan includes, a bigger plan includes more disk: compare the plans on our shared hosting page. How to Manage Your Hosting Services shows where to upgrade in the client area.

If you have a question about your disk usage, open a ticket in the client area.