Introduction
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One way to find out which files are hogging the space, when your hard
drive fills up, is to use a specialist utility that displays your disk
space usage. There are a number of excellent free contenders that
differ mainly in the way the disk space usage is portrayed. In taking over this category, I looked at what had been done before and what had been suggested by you the reader. These disk space analysers are basically a graphical representation of the windows explorer tree which includes all folders and files. There are headings above groups of boxes (or shapes), these headings represent folders, while the boxes (or shapes) represent files in these folders. Usually the visual size seems to be directly proportional to the size of the file it represents: allowing people to quickly identify large files that could be wasting space and hurting performance. I've tested most of the utilities on the same PC (that was not connected to the Internet) for consistency. WinXP reported the drive had 121 GB (130,190,659,584) used and 158 GB (169,867,522,048) free for a total of 279 GB (300,058,181,632). Only DiskSpaceFan had to be put on another PC as it required Microsoft.Net Framework to run. |
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Discussion
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 SpaceSniffer remains #1 for three simple reasons, first and foremost it's free and second it seems to be far and away the best free space disk analyzer, and thirdly it is standalone (i.e.no install). It only took about a minute to do the whole drive.It can display free space and unknown space. The program reported the space as: Free 160.1 GB, Used 119.1 GB. The "levels of detail" is button selected (8 levels). The "Go home" button takes you back to master display. You can drill down by double clicking on an area. The default colours are: drive (orange), free space (green), folders (skin tone), unknown space (gray) and file (blue). All are changeable. Can change contrast, border contrast and a hi-light halo level (when a file is selected or mouse is hovered). There is an export function that will give you either the file list in the selected directory or stats about that directory: this did not seem too useful.  WinDirStat
is another outstanding program. Different languages can be installed
(Czech, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch,
Polish, Russian and Estonian)It reported 279.5 GB total, 158.2 GB Free. It took about about 20 sec to scan the drive. Shows files types and the size they consume. The lower half of the windows shows a coloured picture of file types (tree map - can be turned off). Click in this area and the file is highlighted above. Each file's relative size is also displayed in the lower window. A click on the file type window highlights all the locations on the disk in the lower window. Once the amount of space consumed by the file type drops, all other file types a lumped together. Clicking in the file list, say on a directory, highlights the location in the lower window. Options include: open explorer at the selected location; cmd prompt at the selected location; delete and erase; properties and empty the recycle bin. You can also zoom in and out of the tree map; select the parent directory and there is a good help feature that is built-in.  Folder Size from MindGems Software installed fine, then tried to go to the website - problematic if you're not connected. It took a few minutes or so to scan the drive. Has different units (B, KB, MB, or GB). Displayed drive size as 122.62 GB (131,659,620,315). Tried to download a flash player for the chart display (again problematic if you're not connected). Can scan a folder and shows size, percent, number of files, number of sub-folders, dates, attribvutes and owner. Able to 'drill down' by double clicking on a folder name. Clearly shows the page.sys file when "home". View window in lower right summarises all the drive. C reported as 279.45 GB, 121.25 GB free and 158.20 GB used.
GetFolderSize
adds a right click to the explorer context (and Xplorer2) to get folder
size. Reports the number of files and sub-directories giving the size
(bytes, KB, MB, or GB with or without
 two decimal display), percent, number of files and number of folders.
What to display is selectable by button presses on
the main screen. The largest files can be display at the click of a
button (displayed pagefile.sys). A file list for any directory is
activated by a button click. The display is highly selectable, all by
button clicks. These are the results for the drive: Used 121.25 GB
(130,189,717,504), Free 158.20 GB (169,868,464,128). Cluster size 4.00
KB, and a Total 279.45 GB (300,058,181,632).
Nice program, but no nice visual display of space
consumed on the drive. Files can be deleted from within. You can search
for a folder name (not file name). Column width can be optimised for the
display. Languages are German and English. And it took a minute or so
to scan the drive, so it's not the fastest!
 DiskSpaceFan
needs Microsoft .Net Framework. It also asks if you want to use premium
features that search and delete duplicate files, integrate windows
explorer,and have the capability to filter and exclude files. These were
not tested. The initial scan took about a minute.Shows major directories and pagefile.sys as different colours. You can click on the graph and drill down. Home button takes you back to the usage screen. It counts files and folders in each directory and you can drill down to individual file to get size. Image files give a thumbnail, which is a nice feature. You can also double click on the list on the left pane to drill down. Help goes online. On the PC that was connected to the Internet this utility reported 52.1 GB total, 28.9 GB used and 23.1 GB free. (Explorer also reported 52.1 GB total, 28.9 GB used, and 23.1 GB free.) Glary Utilities tries to access the Internet during the install (as well as on startup) and also attempts to install the ASK toolbar and set it as the default  search engine, but you can turn this off. It has a disk analysis section as part of the many tools (click on Modules on the main screen, then Disk Analysis). It reported 158.20 GB Free, 279.45 GB Total. A very fast scan. Shows file types (e.g. how much space your mp3's take up) and shows large files. Click on the file type and a list of files is shown. Tool bar has links to cmd prompt, explorer and shows properties of an item selected (file or folder). Very useful set of utilities in general.  RidNacs
adds a utility command to the windows explorer context menu (Analyse
disk space with RidNacs). And it can open as a program in its own right.
Very fast scan. Reported 158 GB Free, and 122 GB Used.It shows directories and their size. Nice bar chart display of same with the number of files in each directory. Can drill down by double clicking on the item of interest. Can open a selected directory in explorer. You can save the results as a csv file and has an option to group files smaller than a selectable size (1 MB and above). Two rounding options for files size (explorer like or Banker's rounding. Languages are either English or German. The bar colour is selectable from a small drop down list. Scanner, the install comes with two .reg files. One to add to context menu, and one to remove it. The program is  standalone,
no install, which I like. It took about two minutes to scan the drive,
which I didn't like! It reported 279 GB Total, Used 119 GB (191,851
files), and 160 GB Free.The right click scan a folder feature requires the .reg file to be editied. The right click allows directories to be scanned, not files. Instructions are given and are easy to follow. There are a few bugs described in the installation instructions. There is a graphical display of the files and directories on the disk. Clicking on an area allows the user to drill down. There are buttons to go back; or go back to the parent directory that you started from; rescan or empty the recycle bin or bring up the windows add/remove programs. The summary button seems to do the same as the rescan button. Once the drive is scanned, a rescan is very fast. SpaceMonger, is an obsolete program mentioned in the discussion so I thought I'd try it. Standalone, no install. It is old software only for Win95 98 or NT. It worked on my WinXP machine, but not on another. Scanned the drive in about 15 sec. 160.1 GB Free, 181,283 files, 10576 folders. 279.4 GB total. Display Free space is selecatble. Can drill down interactively. A double click can also run a program. Must use setup feature. It can display full path of file upon hover. Right click can run/open file. Right click zoom did not work all the time, depends where you are in the drill down. Properties of the files can be displayed. As its not supported I can't recommend it - use at your own risk |
SpaceSniffer
Gizmo's Freeware award as the best product in its class!
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
Treemapping Technology, filters enabled, changeable color configuration. Standalone program with no install. Manuals included.
No Scroll Zoom or stats tab
1.1.4.0
1501 KB
Unrestricted freeware
This product is portable
Win98 - Windows7
Using RegEdit, you can integrate SpaceSniffer in the Windows Explorer context menu.
WinDirStat
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
sequoia view and other visual presentation
rectangular treemaps not squarified
1.1.2
645 KB
Unrestricted freeware
Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/2003/Vista
Folder Size
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
Highly versatile with comprehensive reports and pie chart mapping
Please let us know if anything should be included here
2.6.0.0
1.69 MB
Unrestricted freeware
Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7
GetFolderSize
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
Lots of options, quite fast
No visual display of space consumed
2.5.10
2.3 MB
Unrestricted freeware
Windows XP/Vista/7
Glary Utilities
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
Lots of other goodies in this package.
Not specifically designed to do the job.
2.47.0.1539
8.18 MB
32 bit but 64 bit compatible
Unrestricted freeware
Windows XP/2000/Vista/7
RidNacs
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
Fast and can easily drill down.
Website is in German.
2.0.3
701 KB
Unrestricted freeware
Windows All
Scanner
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
Lovely visuals. Standalone program with no install
Please let us know if anything should be included here
2.13
243 KB
Unrestricted freeware
Windows XP and above
DiskSpaceFan
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
Lovely visuals
Please let us know if anything should be included here
4.0
2.0 MB
Unrestricted freeware
Windows XP/Vista/7
SpaceMonger
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
Little to say here
maynot work on your machine - use with care.
1.4.0
212 KB
Unrestricted freeware
Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
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