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Super UserHow can I visualize the file system usage on Windows?
[+311] [23] mutewinter
[2009-07-18 21:51:22]
[ windows printing file-management disk-space community-faq ]
[ https://superuser.com/questions/8248/how-can-i-visualize-the-file-system-usage-on-windows ]

How can I visualize which folders and files are taking up all of the space on my hard drive?

I'm getting some conflicting reports on the size of hard drive contents. Namely what is and isn't there and what folders are actually using the space.

I need to know which of the files or folders the culprits behind all this hidden bloat. Also there should be a print option to get it on paper.

I know that there is some software out there that will do it, but in my searches a few years ago, I was unable to find a free/open source one. However, I use Space Monger on Windows 7 and have taken to it's layout. - kobaltz
Keep in mind, this can be detrimental to performance. Plus the numbers can never be accurate, thanks to hardlinks. - surfasb
(2) Right-click and go to properties. The folder size will be calculated when that request is done. Like surfasb said, performance is probably the major reason that this isn't show anymore. - Terry
Try out TreeSize -- its free, can scan a directory or disk, and graphically will list out where all your "stuff" is and what's taking the most space. jam-software.com/freeware - SnakeDoc
Want to suggest an website that don't require any installation: diezyweb - Endless
[+292] [2009-07-18 21:51:52] Ludwig Weinzierl

WinDirStat [1] is a port of KDirStat for Linux [2]. It's free, lightweight, small (650kb installer), fast, portable (as a standalone .exe file), and works on multiple versions of Windows. Besides showing folders and percentages (for the entire disk or any subset of folders), it also displays an (optional) graphical usage map. Works well with NTFS Junction folders, avoiding counting folders multiple times.

WinDirStat screenshot

[1] http://windirstat.info
[2] http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/

(8) Seems to be based on an earlier college project SequioaView (w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualizat‌​ion/…). I suspect both are derivative. - pcapademic
(3) I love WinDirStat, and the fact it's a small standalone .exe makes it even nicer. - Dentrasi
(1) Thanks for this, I quite like that it does all the work first, and there it's fast. It would be cool if you could pick a dynamic scan mode, depending on the directory you looked at. I don't see much need to scan every file on the disk. I tried using diskview, but it made my win 7 machine crawl, I think the explorer intergration is a bit ropey (in diskview, not this). - optician
(7) +1 because it understands NTFS Junction folders so some directories are not counted multiple times. - Agent_9191
(1) +1 And after WinDirStat came Disk Inventory X to Mac (Linux -> Win -> Mac) - tidbeck
(3) @Svish : I know it's been a while since you posted, but you can adjust WinDirStat's settings to change the look of the ugly boxes at the bottom to something that better suits your tastes. - evilspoons
@optician: you can choose a single folder for it to display. - That Brazilian Guy
@pcapademic: well perhaps if you somehow managed to steal the code for SequoiaView, which was never released. The only thing that mimics SV is the default color theme of the treemap. - 0xC0000022L
(2) It's a bit unfortunate that this answer mentions a stand-alone version and provides a link that leads to a website that apparently does not contain any stand-alone version. To prevent others searching for the stand-alone version as long as I did: simply google WinDirStats portable. Update: Just realized that this "portable" version also requires installation. I give up: I can't find a stand-alone version... - bluenote10
WinDirStats Portable's "installation" simply extracts it to a folder. Or basically, it is a standalone version. - surfasb
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[+92] [2010-04-20 13:34:46] afrazier

SpaceSniffer [1] is another possibility. It can scan Alternate Data Streams (ADS) and correctly ignores junctions. However, it is not hard-link aware. If a file has multiple links, they will show up in the scan more than once. I've personally tested all this information to be accurate on Windows XP as of version 1.1.2.0.

SpaceSniffer Screenshot

[1] http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/index.html

(9) +1 For me it's an improvement over WinDirStat and SpaceMonger... This one also shows live changes! ;-) - Tamara Wijsman
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[+63] [2009-07-18 22:15:54] raven

TreeSize [1] is pretty sweet.

Its advantage over the others is that on NTFS drives, it works on the MFT (Master File Table) and reaches extremely high scan speeds.

They have three versions of the product: Free [2], Personal [3] and Professional [4].

The free version doesn't have fancy visualizations and reports but should be sufficient in most cases.

TreeSize screenshot

[1] https://www.jam-software.com/treesize/
[2] https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/
[3] https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_personal/
[4] https://www.jam-software.com/treesize/

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[+36] [2009-07-20 03:38:03] arathorn

JDiskReport [1] (also available for Mac OS X and Linux).

enter image description here

[1] http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/

(2) It's a great app, but it doesn't account for Junction folders in NTFS so the total size may be calculated as larger than it really is. - Agent_9191
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[+34] [2009-07-19 01:04:30] Blorgbeard

I tend to stick with Scanner [1]. I occasionally try programs with more features, but I find Scanner does everything I actually need.

Screenshot

[1] http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/

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[+31] [2009-07-18 21:55:01] robintw

I've always used, and liked, SpaceMonger [1]. There is a paid-for newer version, but the old version [2] works fine for my needs.

SpaceMonger screenshot

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceMonger
[2] http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php

(1) The only problem with SpaceMonger (at least the older freeware version) is that it ignores Unicode filenames. It just skips right over them and doesn't include the file at all. WinDirStat at least handles those correctly. I don't know about newer versions of SpaceMonger. - afrazier
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[+25] [2009-07-22 15:09:34] jmanning2k

I like FolderSize [1], since it's integrated into Explorer and caches the results. You always know how much space a folder is taking, and can easily identify space hogs. It's always there, so you don't have to start a separate program.

FolderSize screenshot

[1] http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/

(21) It looks nice but it's not for Windows Vista or Windows 7 - Jonas
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[+23] [2009-07-19 02:23:35] Joel Lucsy

It's old, but I really like the tree map view in SequoiaView [1].

SequoiaView is free and happily works all the way up to Windows 7 and Server 2008.

SequoiaView screenshot

[1] https://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

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[+23] [2009-12-21 18:38:53] Mark

I'd recommend Disk Space Fan [1]. It has a similar UI to Scanner or Overdisk, but looks more fashionable. Current price for a single license in 15$.

Disk Space Fan screenshot

[1] http://www.diskspacefan.com

This program totally locked up and responded very very slowly when used on any partitions > 2TB. - glenneroo
(5) Note: It's not free - Sawny
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[+20] [2010-03-17 10:13:50] rob

With Sysinternal suite [1], you have du.
I like it, because it is command-line, very lean and fast. And it is free :-)

C:\>du somedir

Du v1.33 - report directory disk usage
Copyright (C) 2005-2007 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Files:        28618
Directories:  2625
Size:         671,672,063 bytes
Size on disk: 671,672,063 bytes


C:\>
[1] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

(3) du is also hardlink-aware, with the -u parameter. With that, it can show you the count of actual files on disk and their size if there are any hardlinked files. - afrazier
(3) lol... windows becomes more and more POSIX compatible every day... oh my! - SnakeDoc
du does not provide any thing more than windows file explorer does. Do not imagine that you could do "du -sh" like in linux. - Mert Mertce
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[+15] [2016-11-24 06:26:06] user

WizTree [1] is free and can read directly MFT, so in contrast to most other programs it scan in seconds.

screenshot 1

[1] http://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-finds-the-files-and-folders-using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/

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[+14] [2012-04-03 09:45:17] Kiquenet

There are many possibilities, but in my opinion the best programs to show file system usage are: WinDirstat, Scanner, Xinorbis and SpaceSniffer.

limited

not free

not found

References:

Overdisk alternatives [13]

How can I visualize the file system usage on Windows? [14]

Herramientas para analizar el espacio en disco [15]

[1] http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/
[2] http://windirstat.info/download.html
[3] http://foldersize.codeplex.com/
[4] http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/download.html
[5] http://www.snapfiles.com/get/overdisk.html
[6] http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/
[7] http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview/download_sequoiaview/
[8] http://www.diskspacefan.com/download.html
[9] http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/
[10] https://www.jam-software.de/customers/downloadTrial.php?article_no=101&language=EN&PHPSESSID=pl389ukvd3ketl0ih4vgpts8v1
[11] http://www.diskview.com/download.htm
[12] http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/05/12/monitor-your-hard-drive-usage-with-drivespacio
[13] http://alternativeto.net/software/overdisk
[14] https://superuser.com/questions/8248/how-can-i-visualize-the-file-system-usage-on-windows
[15] http://www.genbeta.com/herramientas/herramientas-para-analizar-el-espacio-en-disco

Some of these are broken links and abandoned URLs... :( I might try to update, but I can't assume FolderSize by MindGems is the same as foldersize.codeplex.com - xtian
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[+12] [2009-07-18 22:12:28] Factor Mystic

DiskView [1] is very handy. It has both the pie chart visualization as well as usage bars on the folder tree. It's integrated directly into Windows Explorer.

enter image description here

[1] http://www.diskview.com

Might want to add that it costs $40 as of right now... - Watki02
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[+12] [2009-07-19 04:08:21] nik

The older edition of SpaceMonger [1] is minimalist and functional.

alt text

While WinDirStat shows a similar view, I prefer the higher contrast, visiblity of SpaceMonger when I want to quickly view the state of my drive.

alt text

[1] http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php

Update: I'll now defer to SpaceSniffer (see superuser.com/a/132932/263). Much better and updated interface. - nik
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[+11] [2009-07-18 22:37:53] Peter Boughton

I've always used OverDisk ( web search [1]). Simple and effective.

OverDisk screenshot

Notes:

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=OverDisk
[2] http://users.forthnet.gr/pat/efotinis/programs/overdisk.html
[3] http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3283247/alternatives-overdisk-windows.html

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[+8] [2010-04-21 05:47:37] jdehaan

SizeReporter is a tool I wrote that comes with no GUI. The main trigger for creating this tool was to have a way to run a disk space reporting application under a service and get raw data only. Further processing and own reporting/diagramming can then be done in a custom way by using other Software. I was amazed that for Windows I could not find anything free that actually fit my needs.

The tool is not actually really spectacular but can deal with many quirks and issues on filesystems (bad timestamps, very long paths, junctions, ...). "du" (sysinternals) was the tool I used in the past but delivers only a summary.

I hope this can also be useful to others.

SizeReporter download page [1]

[1] http://color-of-code.de/wiki/product:size_reporter:start

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[+6] [2012-03-11 07:22:30] Mengdi Gao

Folder Size [1]'s documentation [2] says that cannot be done because API has been removed [3] since Windows Vista.

There are few standalone apps exists for folder size checking, like TreeSize Free [4].

[1] http://foldersize.sourceforge.net
[2] http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/vistasucks.html
[3] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646697.aspx
[4] http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

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[+5] [2013-01-14 11:12:10] cg_dev

I've recently found another (rather unimaginative title) FolderSize [1] software from MindGems:

enter image description here

There are freeware and portable versions here [2].

[1] http://www.mindgems.com/products/Folder-Size/Folder-Size.html
[2] http://www.mindgems.com/products/Folder-Size/Folder-Size-Download.htm

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[+5] [2023-02-16 12:03:15] hb20007

As of Windows 10, there is a built-in utility for this. Navigate to Settings and then Storage.

Click on "Show more categories" at the bottom to get the full picture: Screenshot

Clicking the "Other" section will display the folders taking up the most space. For example:

Screenshot 2


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[+4] [2012-04-03 11:16:04] IsmailS

FolderSize.Win32 [1] is ultimate one. You can use the scroll button to peek in and out of folders and easily find out any deep nested folder which is consuming lot of space.

Shows everything visually. Very very nice.

FolderSize.Win32

[1] http://foldersize.codeplex.com/

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[+2] [2012-04-03 10:23:31] Adam Thompson

I see WinDirStat has been given a few mentions already - so I'll just throw ShowMan [1] into the mix.

I like the display of ShowMan better than WinDirStat, as it's cleaner to look at. However - ShowMan is not free for commercial use (and for that reason, I have been using WinDirStat more recently).

[1] http://www.satsignal.eu/software/disk.html

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[+1] [2016-10-04 09:40:07] PeterJ

It seems every disk space analyser under the sun has been listed and the one with the most votes hasn't had a new release since the question was asked seven years ago!

I recommend Folder Size Explorer [1], one of the newest and simplest disk space analyzers that can quickly display which folders are using the most disk space and also export the list for printing. It has the same familiar functionality as the built-in Windows Explorer so it's very intuitive.

enter image description here

[1] http://www.folder-size-explorer.com/download-folder-size-explorer.shtml

"...the one with the most votes hasn't had a new release since the question was asked seven years ago!" But that being said, even after all these years the one with the most votes still works... it doesn't need a new release. - Run5k
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[0] [2022-08-09 04:57:53] Alireza Fattahi

I use Glary Utilities [1] which is free with lots of useful tools in different categories.

There is a Disk Space Analyzer which is can help.

enter image description here

enter image description here

[1] https://www.glarysoft.com/

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