ARCHIVED: In Unix, why do the values reported by the du and quota commands sometimes differ?

In Unix, the du and quota commands may report different values. The reason for this discrepancy is that the process which goes through the file system, checks quotas, and updates the usage tables only runs at specific times. Therefore, there will be periods between quota checks that the quota -v command will report incorrect disk usage. Use the du command for the most accurate information about the size of your files.