How to list the largest files in a Moodle 2.x site

Earlier this week, I was working with a client whose Moodle server was full. They asked me to help figure out why it was full. This can be a challenging question when using Moodle 2.x due to the fact that files are saved in a single hashed space. In this client's case, 6 SCORM files were using 3/5 of all their storage. Here is the simple query I developed to create the list showing the original filename and path, the storage used in megabytes, the content hash (ie filename used in moodle data folder), and which component of Moodle owns the file. The output is sorted by largest files first with a limit of the 50 largest files.


SELECT DISTINCT filename, filepath, FORMAT( (filesize /1024 /1024), 1 ) AS filesize_MB, contenthash, component
FROM  `mdl_files` 
ORDER BY filesize DESC 
LIMIT 0 , 50


If you are a Remote-Learner hosting client you can run this query via your phpMyAdmin link contained in your customer kit, or request via our support portal.

During this research I also found that its is possible for a file to become orphaned. In this situation the file is still stored in the moodle data folder, but is no longer referenced in the mdl_files table of the database. Look for a future post on how to track down orphaned files.