If you suffer from Hard Drive full messages or simply wonder where all your hard drive space is going to then the following hard drive disk space freeware could be invaluable. This freeware will let you visualize disk space on a hard drive or in a folder to see which files are taking up space. All the following are Vista compatible.

Photo by Digressive

Windirstat

Our first app Windirstat (windows directory stats) was last updated in 2007 but does a great job and is portable. It has a standard bar graph treemap and a squared treemap that shows files as a square with the relative size of the file equalling the size of the square. Any big files can easily be spotted this way. Different colours represent different file types. When a file is hovered over with the mouse, it’s name appears in the status bar at the bottom. The grey box represents free space here on a flash drive mainly populated with vobs (dvd files).

Windirstat

Spacemonger 1.4.0

Spacemonger is a quick little directory app that can also be run on a portable drive. This version is freeware but the latest 2.1 isn’t. The new paid for version adds charts and graphs as well as a more customizable interface. There are no treemap bargraphs but hover-over tooltips and colours can be customized. It is very easy to use and gives a nice representation of your drives. Great name too.

SpaceMonger

Treesize Free

Jam Software give us Treesize Free which as the name suggests gives you treesizes only as represented by bar graphs. The info can be changed from sizes to percent or allocated space for a file or folder. Again this is very quick app and also portable. Jam Software have also released a treesize mobile which is in beta and free for windows mobiles users.

Treesize Free

JDiskreport

A slightly slower scan from Jdiskreport but the wealth of details available once complete are impressive. Directories and files can be graphed, charted, and listed in any number of ways by there size, last modified date or type. A history of pages you have looked at is remembered and you can cycle forwards and backwards (like a browser) through these using the arrows. The last scan is also remembered and can be selected again when the program is restarted. Unfortunately Jdiskreport is not portable as it requires Java to run.

JdiskReport

Folder Size

An application here that really has stood the test of time. Folder size was last updated on the 5th of May 2002 but don’t let this put you off. Point it at a folder or disk and Folder size will very quickly show you colour coded folders and files for different sizes. It can also show bar graphs of folders and is a nifty 174kb download. It does exactly what it says on the tin and is portable. Hoorah.

Folder Size

Glary Utilities Free

Last but definitely not least. On this fairly new blog of mine I have mentioned Glary Utilities a few times. I wish I was getting some sort of financial reward for this but alas not. They are here again because within their utilities suite they have a disk analysis module that works very well. It looks very similar to windirstat but with no square file size representation. Glary Utilities has lots of great features – too many to list here that include disk cleaning and startup management. I included it in a roundup of disk and browser history cleaners I reviewed. If you haven’t haven’t already downloaded Glary Utilities I’d give it a whirl as it can replace any number of other apps. It is also portable which is no mean feat given the functionality it provides.

Glary Utilities

Other disk space managers that didn’t quite make the grade and are not recommended : Disktective – shows pie charts quickly. Free Disk Usage Analyzer – A bloated 11 meg install that gives bar charts and links to the built in windows cleanup tool.

I prefer Windirstat out of all of these as it works quickly and shows me what I need.

This couldn’t have been written without this page from Gizmo.

Please let me know which of these you prefer or any alternates in the comments.

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