What are Inodes
In computing, an inode is a data structure on a traditional Unix-style file system. An inode stores basic information about a regular file, directory, or other file system object.
This means, GNU/Linux and Unix systems uses Inodes data structures to keep information about files and folders on your machine (e.g. owndership, permissions…). If you have 100 inodes that means that you have 100 files in your account. Thus, number of inodes is actually number of your files on file system.
Many webhosting companies do not mention inodes in their hosting plans. It is unlikelly that you’ll be informed about allowed inodes distribution.
Number of inodes can affect the backup process. For example, Hostgator allows maximum of 250.000 inodes, but if your site reach 50.000 inodes, only databases will be included in the backup, without static files.
You may think that 50.000 is lot, but if your site(s) has builtin caching the number will soon be reached.
Also, many hosting providers doesn’t allow continuously publishing and deleting large numbers of files (i.e. more than 10,000)
How to see current number of inodes
If you have hosting package with CPanel number of inodes are displayed in left column after login.
How to reduce inodes number
– delete unwanted webfiles/data in the hosting
– download the emails contents to local PC
