bigdist package facilitates storing distance matrices on disk as 'file-backed matrix' (FBM) using bigstatsr package. The FBM stores a symmetric matrix. Each distance is stored as a 'float/double' approximately requiring 4 or 8 bytes. The resulting file size will approximately be $8 * size^2$ where size is nrow/ncol of the data matrix. Working with bigdist package requires working knowledge of bigstatsr package.
bigdist: (function) Create or connect to distance matrix on disk.
as_bigdist: (method) Convert to 'bigdist' class.
disto package provides a unified interface to distance matrices in-memory (class 'dist') or on disk (class 'bigdist').
Useful links: