Meilisearch Disk Usage Keeps Growing / No Space Left on Device

How to fix it

Try these in order — the most common fix is first.

1. 1. Free what you can

   Copy steps
   1. Delete finished tasks with DELETE /tasks
   2. Free space on the partition and on /tmp, then resend failed tasks
   Did this fix it? Yes No

2. 2. Shrink the database

   Copy steps
   1. Create a dump with POST /dumps
   2. Start a fresh instance and import the dump, which rebuilds a compact database
   Did this fix it? Yes No

3. 3. Reduce index size

   Copy steps
   1. Remove fields that are not searchable, filterable, sortable or displayed
   2. Restrict searchable and filterable attributes
   Did this fix it? Yes No

Symptoms

data.ms keeps growing after deleting documents; writes fail with no_space_left_on_device.

Why it happens

• LMDB marks deleted space as reusable but doesn't release it to the OS
• Settings, facets and languages inflate index size
• Task queue reached about 10 GiB
• Temporary storage (/tmp) full during indexing

This guide also covers

• meilisearch no space left on device
• meilisearch disk usage high
• meilisearch data.ms size

Other Meilisearch errors

• Meilisearch Tasks Stuck on Enqueued
• Meilisearch Indexing Slow
• Meilisearch Documents Not Showing Up
• Meilisearch Primary Key Error
• Meilisearch Filter Not Working (Attribute Not Filterable)
• Meilisearch Invalid API Key / Missing Authorization Header
• Meilisearch Database Version Incompatible After Upgrade
• Meilisearch High Memory Usage