WinDirStat Hard Drive Analyzer - PC Software Help

Have you ever wondered what kinds of files were taking up all the space on your hard drive or where all these space hogging files were located? Many people tend to fill up their hard drives with files they don't need and when it comes time to free up some space they don't know where to begin to look for places to cleanup.

WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewing utility that looks at the hard drive or drives in your computer and shows you where your files are being stored and what directories are using up the most space. It also has the ability to clean up files to recover hard drive space. This can come in very handy if you are getting low on space and need to do some cleanup before your computer's performance begins to suffer.

Once you download and run WinDirStat you can choose which drives you want it to scan for disk usage statistics. If you only have one hard drive then that will be all that is shown in your list of drives.

After the scan it will show you the results in 3 different views. The directory list shows the folders and subfolders and can be sorted by any of the column types such as percentage or size etc. The treemap view shows the whole contents of the directory tree straight away. The extension list acts as a legend and shows statistics about different file types on your computer.

If you want to free up some space you can click on the folder you want to delete and remove it right from the WinDirStat directory. Just be sure it's something you want to delete and is safe to delete. This is done from the Clean Up menu and you have the option to send it to the Recycle Bin or to delete it permanently.

Other useful tools include the ability to copy the path to the folder location you have highlighted as well as open a Windows Explorer or a command prompt window at the folder location.

WinDirStat can be downloaded for free at their website.

Related Tips:
Using Disk Management to Manage Hard Drives
Using Windows Disk Cleanup
Defraggler Disk Defragmenter
PerfectDisk Defragmentation Software
Clean Your PC With Ccleaner

Back to the PC Software Index

More Computer Tips