Tag: size

  • SpaceSniffer Is An Attractive Disk Report Utility

    SpaceSniffer Is An Attractive Disk Report Utility

    As a follow up to this post reviewing 6 tools to view and analyze disk usage and this post on TreeSize here is review of SpaceSniffer. It is described by its author as

    SpaceSniffer is a freeWare (or, better, donationWare) and portable tool application that gives you an idea of how folders and files are structured on your disks

    SpaceSniffer is certainly one of the more attractive and fun to watch applications around. Upon launch and when a drive is chosen SpaceSniffer goes to work. As it does its analysis colorful (colors are configurable) rectangles appear in relative sizes creating a percent by percent 2 dimensional picture of the drive being analyzed.
    SpaceSniffer

    Files and folders are given different colors as are free and unknown spaces. The latter 2 are excluded in the default analysis but that can be changed of course. If the program is left open while other changes are made to the system the affected folders are highlighted briefly. Single and double clicking a rectangle gives more information as it zooms to show a more complete picture, that is its subfolder(s) and contents, of the folder being clicked on. It is also possible to filter the whole drive or any other view for a more specific mapping of the analysis. For example by typing “<3months” (without the quotes) in the filter box only files that are less 3 months old will be shown.

    SpaceSniffer runs on Windows 2000, XP and Vista and is a very useful 871KB zipped download. The download also includes a Quick Start PDF.

  • Tools To View And Analyze Disk Usage

    Tools To View And Analyze Disk Usage

    As a followup to my post on TreeSize here are some other downloads I have come across that let the user view or visualize space usage on a disk.

    For this article I chose to analyze a folder that is approximately 945MB and has 28 subfolders and 170 files. Using a not so new Windows XP machine.

    Free Disk Analyzer is described by its author as

    The easiest tool for quickly finding large files and optimizing disk usage.


    diskusage

    Free Disk Analyzer comes in at 11.1MB, much larger than the others looked at in this article, and while having the most elegant or perhaps uncomplicated interface that is pretty similar to Windows Explorer it still difficult to understand the need for the program size. Free Disk Analyzer includes links to the system control panel and even a breadcrumbs style menu. It was slowest to analyze the chosen folder and provide the info seen in the image, it even went into a Windows ‘Not Responding’ state for a few seconds. But the results clearly and by default include analysis of the files and not just folders or subfolders being scanned. As mentioned, for a download its size it has surprisingly few options. One can filter result by the usual types like images or system files. It is possible to analyze the largest files or set a minimum file size for analysis and also to cache or save the results. After one analysis it took up about 25MB of memory. Supported Windows versions are not listed on the developer’s website.

    OverDisk is described by its author as

    OverDisk is a disk usage browser. It can be used to quickly find out how a partition’s space is distributed among the file system hierarchy.


    diskusage

    OverDisk, at a 502KB download, is much smaller. It generates an immediate graph of the space taken that can be configured for ‘Logical’, ‘Physical’ and ‘Wasted’ space taken by the operating system – as in taking into account the cluster size. One interesting tool is the Statistics under the Info menu which allows the user to check for such things as ‘Deepest’ and ‘Largest’ path names (see image). OverDisk took less than 5MB of memory during and after analysis was complete. Supported Windows versions are not listed on the developer’s website.

    WinDirStat is described by its author as

    WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows


    diskusage

    WinDirStat, a 630KB download, at startup and by default will give an overview of the disk drives and if one doesn’t see the option and doesn’t choose the ‘A Folder’ radio button and just click OK it proceeds to fully analyze the whole drive without any further prompts. Subsequent to that but choosing a folder the stats are displayed pretty instantaneously. The rather strange and unusual map which is also color coded according to file types (see image) makes for a more detailed representation of the space the files take. It is possible to zoom on the map to get a close up if many subfolders or files are being looked at. Various disk cleanup options are included and one can configure more via the Options menu. Memory usage topped off at around 10MB. Runs on all versions of Windows including Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 5 loaded.

    Folder Size is described by its author as

    Folder Size helps you figure out where all that hard drive space has gone on your computer.


    diskusage

    Folder Size is a more basic analyzer with a basic option of visualizing the amount of space each folder or subfolder is taking. It is possible to filter the results but little else is included. At 333KB (unzipped) and not requiring installation it is good for quick reference. Supported Windows versions are not listed on the developer website.

    Xinorbis is described by its author as

    Xinorbis is a simple but powerful hard disk analyzer. Using a sophisticated mix of graphs, tables and tree displays, it gives the user a complete overview of the contents of a hard disk (or directory)


    diskusage

    Xinorbis, another available as a portable no-installation version is 4.64MB unzipped. Xinorbis provides a different and perhaps confusing GUI that packs its features in tabs. The tabs allows such things as keeping a folder history and also many different views of the results be they text, pie chart or table format. It also provides a ‘Top 101’ files table that lists the largest and smallest files in the disk or folder being analyzed. One additional filter that might be of interest is the ‘Null’ tab which lists any null files or empty folders. Xinorbis features four ways to export the results in HTML, XML, CSV and text. It used 15MB of memory. Of note is the shell support that makes it possible to scan a directory from the command line. It runs on Windows 2000, XP and Vista

    For the simplest of all one can not forget Folder Size, an open source project that adds folder sizes right in the Windows Explorer details view, much in the same way as file sizes are displayed. It works on Windows 2000 and XP, and provides a features sorely missing in those and other Windows versions.

  • TreeSize Drive Report

    TreeSize Drive Report

    TreeSize is a small executable that lets the user visualize how much space a drive or a folder and its subfolders is taking. Opening the program and opening any directory or folder presents a windows explorer like and expandable list of folders.

    The results can be viewed in KB, MB, GB, or even mixed units so that varied folder sizes can be more precisely accounted for. It is also possible to view the sizes in percentage, file count and cluster size.

    It is also possible to enable or disable the bar that acts as a relative size indicator (see image below). Most interestingly perhaps are the options to add TreeSize to file and drive context menus accessible via right click and the ability to show tooltips when hovering over the results. The tooltips provide such info as Wasted space, in how data chunks are handled by the operating system, and such things as Creation Date, Average File Size and folder Permissions. Buried under View—>Options is File Filter which lets the user ‘Enter one of more file filters which should be included in a scan’, but it proves mostly useless since it seems to only be an indicator that an uncertain number of a certain file type exists within a folder.

    treesize

    The current version, 2.2.1 , is compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista but the last Windows 98 and ME compatible version, 2.1, is also available. TreeSize is freeware but a professional version with many more features, including the ability to export reports to formats other than a simple print job, is also available.