WinDirStat – Let pacman find your lost disk space

Sorry about the title but if you are reading this it must have worked :-)

Windirstat

 The other day I came across a smart little program called Windirstat. After trying it out I thought I would share it with your guys, because it is pretty awesome tool. What it can do for you, is to scan and analyze a hard drive or just a folder after your choice and show you what type of files is filling up your drive and show you how much space each folder and subfolder are using. It is a great tool of you need to free up space on a harddrive.


When you start up the program you start selecting what part of your system you want to analyze. It can be  All local drives, Individual Drives or just a folder. When you have selected what you want and click the “OK” button the small yellow pacmen go to work and analyze your disk space.

If you click on the picture above you can see the small pacmen in progress analyzing the disk I have selected (that explains my title). The folders obtaining the most space is sorted on the top so you easily can see where most of your disk space has gone. In the bottom, the green bar indicates the progress of the task.

When the scanning has completed you can see the disk usage of the drive. The screen is divided into 3 main windows. In the left you have the folders sorted after how much disk space each folder take up on the drive. On the left you can see witch file type that overall are taking up the most space. If you click one of them you will see some of the colored squares at the bottom will be highlighted. Those squares are showing a virtual disk use of the file type you clicked on. If you click on one of the squares you will notice that the left windows changes and find exactly the file that the colored square you clicked on represented. In that way, you can find out what is taking up most of your disk space and where those files are locating.

Overall a cool little application I think. You can download the program here: Windirstat and the also have their own blog where you can connect with the team behind the software blog.windirstat.info

Before I sign off I will give you a little advice if you are going to do some cleaning up on your hard drive. I you don’t know what a file is being used for. Don’t delete it… ;-)

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17 Thoughts to “WinDirStat – Let pacman find your lost disk space”

  1. Allyson Stewart

    Hi, Thomas. You always seem to find the neatest little applications. Pacman seems so neat, not to mention I loved playing the game too 🙂 Hey, by the way… Not sure if you know it, but your embedded video doesn’t seem to be working on this page. I was, however able to view it on YouTube. Thanks for sharing this program with us.

    1. Hi Allyson
      Yep the Pacman game was fun and I love those cool free apps that can help us in our daily work. The embedded video require Adobe flash player. Don’t know if you have that one installed but glad I put in a link for my YouTube channel as well so you could see it there.

      1. Allyson Stewart

        Ahhh, I see! Sorry, I was having huge computer issues before and the techs reinstalled my hard drive. I forgot to re-add Adobe Flash Player. Thanks for the YouTube link. I too love those free apps.

  2. Tony

    Let’s me try this software.

    1. Let me here what you think about it when you have tried it out?

  3. Gabriella - The Stepford Wife

    Hi Thomas. This is something worth trying – seems like an interesting application to make use of. Shall consider trying it.

    1. You should give it a try. It is an easy way to find out where all your disk space goes.

  4. Lars

    I usually just deletes my temp folder, og the temporary internet files, and get loads of free space.
    Now I can check the rest of my drive 🙂

    1. I am sure that you will find other parts of your hard drive where you can do some cleaning.

  5. Thomas,
    I think I am a lot like Lars as I too usually just deletes my temp folder and temporary internet files. Now that I can check the rest of my drive I’m a little nervous because I don’t know what all of the files are. Is there any resource where I can determine if it is safe to delete a file?

    1. Hi Justin
      It can be difficult to figure out if you can delete a file. You might need to do some searching on Google to figure out what a file is used for. Sometimes I find a program that I don’t use any more and uninstall it from the control Panel. If I am not sure about a file, I leave it alone.

  6. Shine

    Thanks Thomas! I definitely need this. I think my PC has a lot of files taking up space that need to be deleted.

  7. Greg

    I’m not really that techie so I don’t really care that much before when it comes to my disk space. However, when I started to engage myself online, I’m a bit concern with my machines so I let my brother teach me how to check spaces, etc. It’s a bit confusing until now since I’m not really into that but this program might be a great help for me so I could just easily run it and have the result.

  8. Nicole

    Just make sure you now which files to delete. You might be deleting important files in your computer.

    1. Hi Nicole
      It is always vital to know what files are being used for before deleting them. Otherwise you might ran into some serious problems.

  9. Marvin from declaring bankruptcy

    I am using cccleaner to clean up all the mess in my drive.

    1. Hi Marvin
      CCcleaner is a nice program to clean your PC but this program can show you where your biggest disk space comsumers are and what file types they are. You should check it out.

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