How To: Two Of The Best Disk Space Analyzers For Windows

Even though hard drives and SSD's have become less and less expensive, space is still a precious commodity when it comes to storage on a PC.

It's happened to me. You get that pop-up in the lower right corner within Windows. "Oh my god", you exclaim. "How did that happen?"

Well. Don't fret. No need to go digging in Explorer to find out what files are taking up space and which to delete. (And where would you start anyways?)

There are plenty of disk utilities and space analyzers which show this information. These programs are not disk cleaners per se. They do not automatically remove or delete files, but they do display in a slick graphical display which files are residing on your hard drive/ssd.

Windirstat 

Windirstat is a popular favorite among geeks. It gives a graphical display of files as a treemap.

The treemap represents each file as a colored rectangle, the area of which is proportional to the file's size. The rectangles are arranged in such a way, that directories again make up rectangles, which contain all their files and subdirectories. So their area is proportional to the size of the subtrees. The color of a rectangle indicates the type of the file, as shown in the extension list. The cushion shading additionally brings out the directory structure.

Spacesniffer

Spacesniffer gives a slick display of the hard drive tree in a graphical display. It doesn't have the directory list which WinDirStat has, however the "tree map" is clickable, allowing you to dig deeper within the file folders.

So next time