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.
- Poll: How reliable are ChatGPT and Bing Chat? - Tue, May 23 2023
- Pip install Boto3 - Thu, Mar 24 2022
- Install Boto3 (AWS SDK for Python) in Visual Studio Code (VS Code) on Windows - Wed, Feb 23 2022
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.
Subscribe to 4sysops newsletter!
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.
Read the latest IT news and community updates!
Join our IT community and read articles without ads!
Do you want to write for 4sysops? We are looking for new authors.
Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with JAM Software – i’m just using their product.
There’s Treesize Free, which offers similar functionality (and doesn’t require installation, which is a very good thing.
They also offer a “for sale” version, with more features.
windirstat also doesnt need installing – just extract the zip file to a directory and run it from there. The only thing I’ve not been able to do with windirstat (yet) is to select all the .tmp file and then delete them all in one go. It is amazing to see how many of those files exist, but frustrating to not be able to delete them (without writing a macro)
OK, these utilites are really fine. But mine is of no doubt the least one of them in his size. The Dirlot – folder size report diagram. (Shameless bragging 🙂
WinDirStat, while stand alone, could do with filepacking: it requires 9 of its own DLLs 🙁