Find out What is Using up Your Hard Drive Space With WinDirStat
November 17, 2007
Have you ever looked at your hard disk free space, and wondered where it all went? I mean, when I bought that 250G drive, I thought I would never need more space.
WindirStat is a easy way to graphically see where all of that free space went to. I use it all the time, even on my networks, to see what is using up all of my drive space.
Of course, it doesn’t run instantly, after all, WinDirStat has to crawl through every directory on your hard drive. While directories are being updated, you are entertained with little packmen running back and forth next to the directories it is updating.
The visual representation of the files is neat, but I really look for the top half of the screen, pictured below.
Directories are listed with the largest on top, and you can continue to drill down into the subdirectories to find out what they are made up of.
This really is a great utility, and you can’t beat the price, which is free.
You can download WinDirStat from the Downloads page, also check out the WinDirStat Web Site.
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Posted in Applications, free stuff, Open Source, Personal-Computing, Reviews, Tech, Utilities
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November 17th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I have used this in the past. It is pretty sweet.
November 17th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
It sure is. The new version has a installer, but the old version was just a stand alone folder, and you can drop it on your thumbdrive.
November 19th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I always get that memory stuff mixed up. Or — hard drive space. So when it says 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM…what does that actually mean? And if I have 174.11 GB available, is that a lot? I know what’s taking up all my space. The Adobe Creative Suite. And photos. And music. Still can’t figure out how to get Leopard to love my external hard drive so I can get some of it off this computer.
November 19th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
RAM is the memory where things are held temporarily, and where programs copy themselves to in order to Run. That is usually referred to as “memory”. The 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM is referring to RAM or Memory.
RAM is really fast, and that’s why it is expensive.
Hard Drive Space is usually referred to as “Storage”. It’s much slower than RAM, and is much cheaper.
174 GB free is referring to your hard drive space, or storage. That is a lot to have available, so you should be good to go. Unless you start doing big video capture and editing projects.
Unfortunately, I can’t really help you with Leapord, I’m a Windows guy, and don’t have any experience with Macs. If you have 174G free on the hard drive in your computer, than you can probably just use the external drive for backups.
Hope that helped, and thanks for the comment!
November 20th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Hi Mike
This looks like a great piece of software to see where all your drive space has gone.
I spend alot of time keeeping my pc clean of things I no longer need.This looks like it
may be a good tool to try out.
Thanks
Steven
November 20th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Glad you think so Steven, I sure find it handy. Thanks for the comment!
November 21st, 2007 at 8:45 am
Mike – love this software. I find that the visual representation of the data makes it easy to explain to clients how much hdd space they have, what is taking up that space, and how much data they likely aren’t backing up..
Great Post.
SB
November 21st, 2007 at 9:20 am
Thanks Scott!
November 24th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
exactly like disk inventory x for Mac OS X
November 24th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
I’ll have to take your word for it Gary, I haven’t used a MAC since about 1992. A really handy utility for Windows users.
Thanks for the comment!
November 25th, 2007 at 8:51 am
For OS X, you could also use WhatSize, a free program that basically does the same.
November 25th, 2007 at 8:52 am
And for Linux users with KDE as desktop manager, you can use
KDirStat which is exactly the same progam as WinDirStat
November 25th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Thanks Gijs!
November 27th, 2007 at 5:03 am
[...] had 9,556 Visitors, and 19,473 pageviews! Just about all of the hits have been on my “Find out What is Using up Your Hard Drive Space With WinDirStat” post, and some of the posts in the “related posts” section of that [...]
November 27th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Not to put down dirstat but I personally prefer Spacemonger http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/. Spacemonger’s representation of data is so much more intuitive then that rainbow blob. Unfortunately the 2.x stream is now commercial but you can still download the 1.x stream for free and it works well.
November 27th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Thanks for the suggestion linuxamp! I’ll have to check it out.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:07 am
On Windows I prefer SequoiaView, which is fairly similar but with a slightly simplified UI. KDirStat is necessary on Linux, though.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:33 am
Thanks Randall, I’ll have to check that one out too!
January 25th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Don’t forgot that WinDirStat is just the port of the Linux program KDirStat.
January 27th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Thanks Jake! That’s been mentioned a couple of time already, as well as a few Windows Alternatives, and Mac OS versions. Good Stuff!
March 20th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Sorry about digging up an old post, but just wanted to mention that this is now available at portableapps.com.
March 20th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
No worries. I actually have an older version that didn’t have an installer, and it works like a charm on my thumbdrive.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:02 pm
[...] used this one before and have found it quite handy, so when I came across this article on http://port16.com/blog/2007/11/17/find-out-what-is-using-up-your-hard-drive-space-with-windirstat I just had to put it on the [...]
September 28th, 2008 at 6:23 am
Thanks for this program, easy to setup and use.
September 28th, 2008 at 7:16 am
No problem, glad you liked it!
June 6th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Wow that was strange. I just wrote an really long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Regardless, just wanted to say great blog!
June 6th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
Sorry about that. Thanks for the comment though!
February 3rd, 2012 at 6:09 am
Wonderful website you have here but I was curious about if you knew of any community forums that cover the same topics discussed in this article? I’d really like to be a part of group where I can get feed-back from other experienced people that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Appreciate it!