Did this ever happen to you? You wanted to install a new program, only to realize that there is not enough disk space left. I guess, it did. Or how about some users misusing your good-naturedness and overloading your file servers? WinDirStat is a free tool that enables you to get an overview of the disk usage of a hard disk or a network share. It shows you what folders and files are occupying much disk space. This way you can locate the worst sinners in your network or you can find files you want delete to get more space.

If you use Windows Explorer to locate files using much disk space, it can be quite time-consuming. You have to navigate to subfolders to find those files occupying most of the space. WinDirStat displays all files in a treemap, a graphical presentation of the occupied space on the selected disks (see screenshot). The bigger a file or folder is, the bigger is the rectangle that represents it. If you click on the rectangle, WinDirStat will open the directory list in its Explorer-like interface.

This enables you to locate big files and folders deeply hidden in the directory tree. WinDirStat displays file types with different colors. This allows you to find files that you can delete faster. You can also open a file or run an executable directly from WinDirStat like in Windows Explorer if you are not sure about its contents or purpose.

Another nice feature of WinDirStat is that it is able to sort folders based on the occupied disk space of its contents. Thereby, it also takes all subfolders into account. This feature is very useful to locate the aforementioned sinners. Just go to the network share where your users store their files and you immediately get a ranking of the worst space squanderers.

WinDirStat has some more features. So, if you often have to struggle with disk space, you should have a look at this nifty, free tool.

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