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If your resized volume appears smaller than expected, the volume usually resized correctly. In most cases, the difference comes from how the filesystem stores and reports space.

Common causes include:

• Filesystem overhead: Filesystems use some space for metadata and internal structures. This reduces the amount of usable space shown by tools like df.

• Reserved space: Some filesystems reserve space for system use. For example, Ext4 often reserves 5% of the filesystem for the root user. On a 500 GiB volume, that can reserve about 25 GiB, so the available space appears lower than expected.

• Different size units: Some tools report sizes in gibibytes (GiB, base 1024) and others report in gigabytes (GB, base 1000). We display volume sizes in GiB, so the number you see in your operating system may differ depending on the tool you use.

After you resize a volume, verify the following:

• The volume resize completed: In the control panel, click Volumes Block Storage and confirm the new size appears for the volume.
• The filesystem was expanded: Resizing the volume does not always expand the filesystem automatically. On the Droplet, run df -h and check the size shown for the mounted filesystem. If the filesystem was expanded successfully, the Size column shows the new volume size or close to it. If it still shows the old size, expand the filesystem on the Droplet.
• The reported space matches the filesystem: Run df -h and compare the Size and Avail columns for the mounted filesystem. The Avail value may be lower than expected because the filesystem uses some space for metadata or reserves space for system use. A lower Avail value does not always mean the resize failed.

If you use Ext4 or XFS, you can also review filesystem-specific settings such as reserved blocks and metadata usage. For Ext4, use tune2fs. For XFS, use xfs_info or xfs_io, depending on what you need to inspect.

If the volume size is correct in the control panel but df -h still shows the old filesystem size, expand the filesystem on the Droplet.

Related Topics

Why is my snapshot's size different from reported disk usage?

Snapshots of Droplets are a best estimate based on the disk usage. Snapshots of volumes operate at the block storage level, so the snapshot size may not match what the filesystem reports.

Can I make my Droplet smaller?

You cannot resize Droplets to smaller plans, but you can migrate your data to a smaller Droplet.

Can I resize a DOKS node?

You can resize a DOKS node by creating a new node pool of the desired size.