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All The Figures You'll Need To Prune Your Hard Drive
I've recently been working on a couple of Windows machines that were running short of hard disk space. I could, of course, have simply added a new drive to the machine, or replaced the existing one with a larger model. But if you find yourself in a similar position, it's always a good idea to start by looking for stuff that you can delete rather than just adding more storage.
Adding more storage means that you're potentially going to make the problem worse. If you (or your computer) can't keep a relatively small drive tidy, you won't manage much better with a larger one. Plus, with more data, there's more to back up.
There are lots of free programs around that can show you a simple display of all the directories/folders on your drive, sorted by size. One of my favourites is WinDirStat, which you can get from http://windirstat.info/download.html. It's small, free, open source, relatively quick to scan your drives, and presents the information in a neat way as shown below. Then it's just a case of scanning down the list of folders in order of percentage, and look for likely candidates that you know are safe to delete, archive, or move elsewhere.
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WinDirStat gave wrong numbers while counting up the number of certain extensions on my machine; deinstalled...
I must apologize. I have reviewed my WinDirStat report and it appears I myself made an error: the program is in fact correctly reporting the size of groups of extensions.
Is there a way to figure out or to know what folders can be deleted and which one should not be touched.
Thanks
I have a couple hard-disks that have multiple 'desktops'. Is there a way to list and sort all the 'shortcuts'on the disks? I can use WinDirStat also.
I have always found FDISK to be a great way to free up A LOT of space. Seriously, great posting and great comment, found a lot of new ones I had not tried yet. My go-to is "Space-Sniffer".
http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/index.html
One thing so valuable about this is that others recommend programs that they use and sometimes brings attention to another superb freeware or tip.
That being said, I looked at all the other readers' recommendations and I will have to go with WinDirStat. My brain works better linearly and for speed of disc pruning, I don't relate to the pie charts. Some of the others seemed pretty good, though.
However, WinDirStat has the directory map, a graphical tree map (screen shot not shown in article), and extension list all on one screen. Three ways to quickly find the info you need. (And what a crack up--when it is analyzing your disc, it has mini eating Pac Man's that go back and forth while it is reading a directory.) I think it's a great find.
I tried dozens of drive usage software and "Free Disk Usage Analyzer" is my favorite. No graphical view but it's very efficient for pruning with "Largest files" and "Largest folders" lists.
http://www.extensoft.com/?p=free_disk_analyzer
SpaceMonger FTW!
http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php
Personally still a fan of Scanner
http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/
WinDirStat color blocks are too distracting, especially when comparing dozens of small folders. I agree with eikelein, Treesize Free is far more useful, and still available on Jam's website:
http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/
If the question is just "Where did the space go" then I prefer Treesize Free. It is still out there on several download sites.
windirstat is good, but treepie is by far my favorite. Find it at http://sourceforge.net/projects/treepie/. I feel its presentation of a computer's file system is superior to windirstat's IMHO
I've used WinDirStat for years. Even on our servers, we just use the .exe, no install needed. Perfect little gem!
all i can find on the link mentioned are intallation(setup) files.
where can we find the .exe file?
thanks for any assistance
I'll try this one. I was using SpaceSniffer till now as recommended in our article http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-disk-space-analyzer.htm and its a very good program. The visual presentation of WindirStat looks better.
Thanks for this, I've used DiskSpaceFan (called something like that) in the past which produces great visualisations but this is more the kind of tool I'm after - need to find those out of date linux distro ISOs that are hiding in various folders...
For some reason I keep coming back to SequoiaView – mostly because I keep forgetting WinDirStat's name when I need it, even though it does much the same thing.
You didn't mention the fantastic visual display that shows your hard drive usage as coloured blocks with file descriptions and links.
Excellent program for house keeping.
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