Best Free Disk Space Analyzer

When your hard drive fills up, one way to find out which files are hogging the space is to use a specialist utility that displays your disk space usage visually. There are a number of excellent free contenders that differ mainly in the way the disk space usage is portrayed.

In taking over this category, I looked at what had been done before and what had been suggested by you, the reader. These Disk Space Analysers are basically a graphical representation of the windows explorer tree which includes all folders and files. There are headings above groups of boxes (or shapes), these headings represent folders, while the boxes (or shapes)themselves represent files in these folders. Usually the visual size seems to be directly proportional to the size of the file it represents. Allowing people to quickly identify large files that could be wasting space and hurting performance.

I've tested most of the utilities on the same PC (that was not connected to the internet) for consistency.  WinXP reported the drive had 121 GB (130,190,659,584) used and 158 GB (169,867,522,048) free for a total of 279 GB (300,058,181,632).  Only DiskSpaceFan had to be put on another PC as it required Microsoft.Net Framework to run. 

SpaceSniffer remains #1 for three simple reasons first, and foremost it's free, and second it seems to be far and away the best free space disk analyzer, and it is standalone, (i.e.no install).  Took about a minute to do the whole drive.

Can display, or not, free space, and unknown space. The program reported the space as:  Free 160.1 GB, Used 119.0 GB.  The "levels of detail" is button selected (8 levels).  The "Go home" button takes you back to master display.  You can drill down by double clicking on an area.  The default colours are: drive (orange), free space (green), folders (skin tone), unknown space (gray), file (blue).  All are changeable.  Can change contrast, border contrast, and a hi-light halo level (when a file is selected or mouse is hovered).  There is an export function that will give you either the file list in the selected directory or stats about that directory.  This did not seem too useful,

WinDirStat is another outstanding program. Different languages can be installed (Czech, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Estonian)

It reported 279.5 GB total, 158.2 GB Free.  Took about about 20 sec to scan the drive.  Shows files types and the size they consume.  The lower half of the windows shows a coloured picture of files types (tree map - can be turned off).  Click in this area and the file is highlighted above.  Each file's relative size is also displayed in the lower window.  A click on the file type windows highlights all the locations on the disk in the lower window.  Once the amount of space consumed by the file type drops, all other file types a lumped together.  Clicking in the file list, say on a directory, highlights the location in the lower window.  Options include open explorer at the selected location, cmd prompt at the selected location, delete, and erase, properties, empty the recycle bin.    You can zoom in and out of the tree map, select the parent directory, and there is a good help feature that is built in.

Folder Size from MindGems Software installed fine, then tried to go to the website.  Problematic if you're not connected.  It took a few minutes or so the scan the drive.  Has different units (B, KB, MB, or GB).  Displayed drive size as 122.62 GB (131,659,620,315).  Tried to download a flash player for the chart display (again problematic if you're not connected).  Can scan a folder.  Shows size, percent, number of files, number of sub-folders, dates, attribvutes, and owner.  Can drill down by double clicking on a folder name.  Clearly shows the page.sys file when "home".

View window in lower right summarises all the drive.  C reported as 279.45 GB, 121.25 Gb free, and 158.20 Gb used.

GetFolderSize adds a right click to the explorer context (and Xplorer2) to get Folder size.  Reports the number of files, and sub-directories giving the size (bytes, or kb, or MB, or GB with or without two decimal display), percent, number of files, number of folders.  What to display is selectable by button presses on the main screen.  The largest files can be display at the click of a button (displayed pagefile.sys).  A file list for any directory is a button click.  The display is highly selectable, all by button clicks.  These are the results for the drive: used 121.25 GB (130,189,717,504), Free 158.20 GB (169,868,464,128). Cluster size 4.00 kB, and a Total  279.45 GB (300,058,181,632).  Nice program, but no nice visual display of space consumed on the drive.  Files can be deleted from within.  You can search for a folder name (not file name).  Column width can be optimised for the display.  Languages are  German and English.  And it took a minute or so the scan the drive, so its not the fastest!

DiskSpaceFan needs Microsoft .Net frame work.  It also asks if you want to use premium features that search and delete duplicate files, integrate windows explorer, and have the capability to filter an exclude files.  These were not tested.  The initial scan took about a minute.  Shows major directories and pagefile.sys as different colours.  You can click on the graph and drill down.  Home button takes back to usage screen.  It counts files and folders in each directory and you can drill down to individual file to get size.  Image files give a thumbnail, which is a nice feature.  You can also double click on the list on the left pane to drill down.  Help goes online.  On the PC that was connected to the internet this utility reported 52.1 GB total, 28.9 GB used, and 23.1 GB free.  (explorer reported 52.1 GB total, 28.9 GB used, and 23.1 GB free).

Glary Utilities also tries to access internet during the install.  Tries to install the ASK toolbar and set it as the default search engine., but you can turn this off.  Tries to access internet on startup.  It has a disk analysis section as part of the many tools (click on Modules on the main screen, then Disk Analysis).  It reported 158.20 GB Free, 279.45 GB total.  A very fast scan.  Shows file types (e.g., how much space your mp3's take up) and shows large files.  Click on the file type, and a list of files is shown. Tool bar has links to cmd prompt, explorer, properties of an item selected (file or folder).  Very useful set of utilities in general.

RidNacs asks a utility command to the windows explorer context menu (Analyse disk space with RidNacs).  And it can open as a program in its own right.  Very fast scan.  Reported 158 GB free, and 122 GB used.  It shows directories, and their size.  Nice bar chart display of same with the number of files in each directory.  Can drill down by double clicking on the item of interest.  Can open a selected directory in explorer.  You can save the results as a csv file, has an option to group files smaller than a selectable size (1 MB and above).  Two rounding options for files size (explorer like or Banker's rounding.  Languages are either English or German.  The bar colour is selectable from a small drop down list.

Scanner, the install comes with two .reg files.  One to add to context menu, and one to remove it.  The program is standalone, no install, which I like.  It took about two minutes to scan the drive, which I didn't like.  It reported 279 GB Total,  Used 119 GB (191,851 files),  and 160 GB Free.  The right click scan a folder feature requires the .reg file be editied. The right click allows directories to be scanned, not files. Instructions are given and are easy to follow.  There are a few bugs described in the installation instructions.  There is a graphical display of the files and directories on the disk.  Clicking on an area allows the user to drill down.  There are buttons to go back, or go back to the parent directory that you started from, or rescan, or empty the recycle bin, or bring up the windows add/remove programs.  The summary button seems to do the same as the re-scan button.  Once the drive is scanned, a rescan is very fast.

SpaceMonger, an obsolete program mentioned in the discussion so I thought I'd try it.  Standalone, no install.  It is old software only for Win95 98 or NT.  It worked on WinXP machine, but not on another.  Scanned the drive in about 15 sec. 160.1 Gb Free, 181,283 files, 10576 folders.  279.4 GB total.  Display Free space  is selecatble.  Can drill down interactively.  A double click can also run a program. Must use setup feature.  It can display full path of file upon hover.  Right click can run/open file.  Right click zoom did not work all the time, depends where you are in the drill down.  Properties of the files can be displayed.  As its not supported I can't recommend it - use at your own risk 
 

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