The bigger the rectangle the bigger file on Windows 10.
On the top-right, you can see what file extensions are using the most space.Īlso, at the bottom, you’ll find a graphical view known as treemap that represents each file as a rectangle. You can drill down to find out the file using the most space on the hard drive. In the top-left side, you’ll see a tree file structure that lets you see which folder is taking the most space. The report is divided into three main sections. Quick note: If the device is running low in space making the experience very slow, you’ll notice that the app will freeze showing the “Not responding” message, but eventually, it’ll complete successfully.Īfter you complete the steps, WinDirStat will scan the drive, and it’ll show you a graphical report allowing you understand what files are taking the most space on the hard drive.
To understand what’s taking up space on Windows 10, you first need to download and install WinDirStat, and then run the tool.
Use WinDirStat to analyze what files are taking up space on Windows 10 In this guide, you’ll learn the steps to using the WinDirStat app to find out what files are filling out the hard drive on Windows 10 to take action accordingly. It does this by scanning the entire drive and generating an easy to visualize report with the size and location of each file, which is useful information that you can use to cleanup space on Windows 10.
WinDirStat is a free third-party tool that has been around for a long time, and it’s a hard drive usage statistic viewer that allows you to see exactly what files are taking the most space on your device. the Microsoft Subnet home page for more bloggers, news, humor, security alerts and more.Although Windows 10 includes Storage sense to analyze the hard drive and free up space, it has some limitation as you cannot see what files are taking the most space, and this is when WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics) comes in handy. Recent Posts Attachmore: Large file transfer tool helps you, Attach more! WAPT: Make sure your website or Intranet can handle the load!! CoffeeCup Free Web Design Tools: Create your website in time it takes to finish a cup of Joe! USB Lock RP: Endpoint security that is not a pain in your end! Cross-platform tools revisited See my lists of great tools 9 wickedly useful Web sites for Windows administrators 12 cool cross-platform tools for Windows, Macs and Linux 20 great Windows open source projects you should get to know A Better Windows World Tools Library Like this and want more? Check out the other tools I've written about in A Better Windows World. The tool can be used on network drives using UNC paths. WinDirStat, has tools to allow you to launch command prompts, cleanup the drive and even open Windows explorer to see the directory where the file resides. However, if you can show visually that MP3 files take up 19% of the storage space and all of the companies’ documents take only 4% that could have a strong impact. In this matter percentages do not work either (not in a direct comparison anyway). Especially when you are going to your boss and saying we have employees storing 200GB’s of music on our 1.5TB storage array. To be able to show through a visual map exactly how much space certain files were taking is far superior than trying to explain GB’s and MB’s. Many times it was hard to explain to management that although hard drive space is cheap, it was not free. The reasoning was that the long hours demanded of the staff meant they should be lenient about jpgs or music files.
I worked for one firm that had a policy of letting employees put just about anything on the file server. So you can see a visual representation of you documents, virtual machines, pdf’s or anything else you can think of on that hard drive. Once the test is completed WinDirStat displays a graph with a physical, color coded representation of all the various file types. It also lets us know when the last change was made to a directory. To start with WinDirStat give you a breakdown of size, percentage, items, files and subdirectories on a hard drive. While the tool at first seems to be a third party version of the disk defragmenter tool in Windows. One great open source tool to help deliver those answers is a tool called WinDirStat. Nevertheless, many times we are left wondering with certain tools, what exactly is going on in my system? Where are things living in that endless amount of disk space? And how efficient are my disks running. That is simply because not every function in IT demands a hundred features in an application. Some of the tools we come upon in IT are not always the most complex and loaded with hundreds of features. WinDirStat: Analyze your Windows directories…Visually!