The largest files on the disk. How to Find Large Files on Disk Using PowerShell
Question “What is taking up so much space on my hard drive?” sometimes it can confuse you. It would seem that all the weighty folders with documents, music, films, as well as installed programs are known to us, but... When we click on the “Properties” of the hard drive and look at the ratio of full and occupied space, we understand that there is an obvious inconsistency - somewhere Several (or maybe a dozen or two) gigabytes of our precious disk space have gone missing.
In such cases, you can audit the contents of user profiles, check hidden system files and folders, the size of the paging file (Pagefile.sys), the hibernation file (hiberfil.sys), the System Volume Information folder, which stores system restore checkpoints, and run the standard utility Windows – “Disk Cleanup” and so on. But these manipulations are not always able to shed light on the truth.
This entry lists several programs whose function is to analyze the structure and volume of information that is stored on the computer's hard drive. For me personally, it is important that these programs are free, easy to use, and most importantly, provide reliable information. I suggest we take a closer look at the programs that meet the specified conditions.
SpaceSniffer is a portable, free program that helps you understand the folder and file structure of your hard drive. SpaceSniffer's visualization diagram will clearly show you where large folders and files are located on your devices. The area of each rectangle is proportional to the size of that file. You can double click on any sector to get more detailed information about it. If you are looking for specific file types, such as JPG files, or files older than a year, use the “Filter” option to select the conditions you specify.
The program has many settings, but its interface is in English. The information it produces seemed to me not very convenient for visual perception and, as a consequence, for evaluating it. But in principle, it works quickly and efficiently. In any case, once you get used to it and delve into the settings, it’s quite possible to use it.
WinDirStat collects information from the selected disk and presents it in three views. A directory list, which resembles the Windows Explorer tree structure, appears in the top left corner and sorts files and folders by size. The extended list that appears in the upper right corner shows statistics about different file types. The file map is located at the bottom of the WinDirStat window. Each colored rectangle represents a file or directory. The area of each rectangle is proportional to the size of the files or subtrees.
The program is not portable, but it has a Russian-language interface. I didn’t delve too deeply into its settings, but one nuance immediately caught my eye - the System Volume Information folder, according to the program, is empty. In fact, this is not the case, System Restore is enabled and a little over 3 GB is currently used for it. So the program lied.
TreeSize Free
Not portable, choice of two languages: German and English. Microsoft certified. Allows you to launch the program in the usual way or from the context menu of a folder or drive. This is a very convenient opportunity, in my opinion. The program shows you the size of the selected folder, including subfolders. The results are presented in a Windows Explorer tree view, so you can expand the selected folder or drive and navigate to the file at each level. To analyze hidden system folders, the program asked to restart the PC.
Disktective is a free, portable utility that reports the actual size of directories and the distribution of subdirectories and files within them. The selected folder or drive is analyzed and the result is displayed in the form of a tree and chart. The interface is English, information collection is fast.
The interface is English, not portable. DiskSavvy is a fast and easy-to-use disk space analyzer that allows you to monitor disk space usage on hard drives, network drives, and NAS servers. The main window shows the percentage of disk space used by each directory and file. You can also easily view pie charts that show results in graphical format. Has a large number of settings.
DiskSavvy is available as a free version, as well as a full, Pro version that provides additional features and technical support. The free version allows you to scan a maximum of 500,000 files, with a maximum hard drive capacity of 2 TB. It supports long file names, unicode file names, and allows you to copy, move, and delete files directly within the program. Cool program, I liked it.
For each selected folder or drive, GetFoldersize displays the total size of all files in that folder or drive, as well as the number of files and their attachments. You can use GetFoldersize to scan an unlimited number of files and folders on internal and external hard drives, DVDs, and network share drives. This program supports long file and folder names and unicode characters and has the ability to display file sizes in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes. GetFoldersize allows you to print a folder tree and save the information to a text file.
GetFoldersize is available in both portable and installable versions, so you can carry it with you on a flash drive or external USB drive. However, if you install GetFoldersize, all its features will be added with the option to launch from the context menu in Windows Explorer, which will allow you to start scanning the volume of a folder or drive by right-clicking on it. The interface is English, there is a good selection of settings.
RidNacs is a fast disk space analyzer that scans local drives, network drives or individual directories, displaying the results in a tree and percentage histogram. You can save scan results in several formats (.TXT, .CSV, .HTML, or .XML). Files can be opened and deleted directly in RidNacs. During installation, you can add the option to run the program in the Windows Explorer context menu. When you scan a folder, it is added to the list of favorite drives. You can also change the appearance of the histogram by installing special skins. The program is not portable; it has 2 interface languages - English and German. She could not analyze some folders, as can be seen in the screenshot.
Portable Scanner program shows a pie chart with concentric rings to show the space usage of your hard drive, external hard drive, network drive. Moving the mouse over the segments in the diagram allows you to display the full path to the object at the top of the window, as well as the size of the directories and the number of files in the directory. Right-clicking on a segment provides additional options. It is possible to delete selected directories to the Trash directly from the program. The archive with the program contains 2 reg files, one of which is used to add the scanner to the Windows Explorer context menu, and the other to remove it.
I liked Free Disk Analyzer more than all other programs. During the installation process, you are offered a choice of 5 languages, Russian is present. The free disk analyzer displays drives on the left side of the window, similar to Windows Explorer, allowing you to quickly navigate to the desired folder or file. The right side of the window displays all subfolders and files in the selected folder or disk, the size and percentage of disk space that the folder or file uses. Tabs at the bottom of the window allow you to quickly select and view your largest files or folders. You can manage your files directly within the program, just like in Windows Explorer. Among the additional features, it is worth noting the launch of the program uninstaller, as well as the settings menu, which allows you to filter only certain files:
If you have previously had problems with “losing” disk space, tell us how and with the help of what programs (or actions) you solved them.
This is the one that over time there is little space. On the one hand, we bought ourselves 1 TB and it seems good, now everything will work. But over time, it turns out that it gets “clogged” and you don’t want to remove the old one (in case it comes in handy), but there is no place for a new one.
Then there comes a moment during which something can be freed. But sometimes this is not enough.
Then a reasonable question arises in my head: But what is taking up so much space on my disk?".
First of all, they “go” to the folders with films, then games and programs. And you have to remove them by grinding your teeth.
So, I won’t bore you, but I’ll write about several programs whose purpose is to show how many and which files (folders) take up the most space on your disk. Of course, all of them (like all the programs provided on my website) are free.
Looking ahead, I’ll tell you that the meaning is the same for everyone - to analyze the system and show in a visual form what and how it takes up space, while showing some additional capabilities. As a result, you can see and delete (if desired) unnecessary large files.
The first program for analyzing a disk and searching for large files and folders is WinDirStat.
After installation and launch, the main program window will look like this:
In it you can specify what exactly needs to be scanned: all drives, a specific drive or a separate folder.
After selection (I selected one system drive), the scanning process will begin:
Which will produce the result. The program window is divided into 3 parts:
1 - result by folder
2 - result for files (types/) indicating their legend
3 - general diagram. The meaning is simple - the more space it takes up, the larger the display.
For convenience, the results are shown in descending order, i.e. The "largest" files are displayed at the top.
This way you can clearly see which files and folders take up how much space on the disk.
Now let's look at what you can do with this information besides simply viewing, namely, pay attention to the top menu with buttons:
Since the program is in Russian and the buttons contain tooltips, I can only list what you can do with a folder or file directly from this program:
As you can see, all the most necessary functions.
By the way, using this program you can also check external and network drives.
Another similar program is JDiskReport.
It differs from the previous one primarily in the absence of the Russian language.
After launch, you will be prompted to select a directory to scan and open the saved analysis file.
You can specify the whole disk and go ahead:
The window is divided into two parts: the left one indicates the location, and the right one generates a diagram.
Let's deal with the left part.
It displays a list of directories sorted by "majority", i.e. The more space a folder takes up, the higher it is. It's the same story in the subfolders.
The right side is much more interesting.
At the bottom you can change the type of diagram (out of four provided) and enable display of files (check Show files).
At the top you can switch to the 50 “best” files ( top 50), see how many files in size occupy certain spaces ( Size Dist), when and how many files were last modified ( Modified) and how much space certain types of files take up ( Types).
In the top menu of the program itself, only two switches are interesting: the first, for sorting alphabetically (and not by “most”), the second to display the number of files (and not the volume).
But you can only view this information. To delete files, you will have to open Explorer and look for this folder or file there. But you can also right-click on the folder and select Open Explorer... to open.
The following program for analyzing and searching large files is Scanner.
The program differs from the previous ones in that it does not require installation (portable).
After launch, it immediately scans all disks and shows summary information:
You can select a specific drive, the scan result will show the volume of folders:
Good afternoon.
Very often, users ask me the same question, but in different interpretations: “What is the hard drive full of?”, “Why has the space on the hard drive decreased, since I haven’t downloaded anything?”, “How to find files that are taking up space on the HDD ? etc.
There are special programs to evaluate and analyze the occupied space on your hard drive, thanks to which you can quickly find and delete everything unnecessary. Actually, this is what this article will be about.
Analysis of occupied hard disk space in charts
1. Scanner
Official site: http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/
A very interesting utility. Its advantages are obvious: it supports the Russian language, no installation required, high speed (it analyzed a 500 GB hard drive in a minute!), and takes up very little space on the hard drive.
The program presents the results of the work in a small window with a diagram (see Fig. 1). If you hover your mouse over the desired piece of the diagram, you can immediately understand what takes up the most space on the HDD.
For example, on my hard drive (see Fig. 1), about a fifth of the busy space is occupied by movies (33 GB, 62 files). By the way, there are quick buttons to go to the trash can and to “add and remove programs.”
2. SpaceSniffer
Official site: http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/index.html
Another utility that does not require installation. When starting, the first thing you will do is ask you to select a drive (specify a letter) to scan. For example, my Windows system disk has 35 GB of space, of which almost 10 GB is occupied by the virtual machine.
In general, the analysis tool is very visual, it helps you immediately understand what is full of your hard drive, where the files are “hidden”, in which folders and on what topic... I recommend it for use!
Rice. 2. SpaceSniffer - analysis of the Windows system disk
3.WinDirStat
Official site: http://windirstat.info/
Another utility of this kind. It is interesting primarily because in addition to simple analysis and drawing up a diagram, it also shows file extensions, painting the diagram in the desired color (see Fig. 3).
In general, it is quite convenient to use: the interface is in Russian, there are quick links (for example, on emptying the recycle bin, editing directories, etc.), it works in all popular Windows operating systems: XP, 7, 8.
Rice. 3. WinDirStat analyzes the “C:\” drive
4. Free Disk Usage Analyzer
Official site: http://www.extensoft.com/?p=free_disk_analyzer
This program is the simplest tool for quickly finding large files and optimizing disk space.
Free Disk Usage Analyzer helps you organize and manage your HDD free disk space by searching for the largest files on the disk. You can quickly find where the largest files are located, such as videos, photos and archives, and move them to another location (or delete them altogether).
By the way, the program supports Russian. There are also quick links that will help you clean your HDD from junk and temporary files, remove unused programs, find the largest folders or files, etc.
5.TreeSize
Official site: http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/
This program cannot build charts, but it conveniently sorts folders depending on the space occupied on the hard drive. It is also very convenient, if you find a folder that takes up a lot of space, click on it and open it in Explorer (see arrows in Fig. 5).
Despite the fact that the program is in English, understanding it is quite simple and quick. Recommended for both beginners and experienced users.
Rice. 5. TreeSize Free - results of analysis of the system drive “C:\”
By the way, significant space on your hard drive can be taken up by so-called “junk” and temporary files (by the way, they reduce the free space on your hard drive, even when you don’t copy or download anything to it!). Periodically, you need to clean your hard drive with special utilities: CCleaner, FreeSpacer, Glary Utilites, etc. Read more about such programs.
That's all for me. I would be grateful for additions on the topic of the article.
Good luck with your PC.
Do you know what the most common question my friends ask me is “How to find the largest files on a computer? I cleaned everything, but there was no more free disk space. What else can I delete and how can I find these huge files taking up disk space?”
Let’s tackle these issues now. I have already described to you on the pages of this site, how to find and remove duplicate files, and today I’ll tell you how to find large files on your computer in just a couple of mouse clicks.
I really take the cleanliness of my beloved computer seriously and constantly monitor it, but today I found more than 3 GB of extra files on the system drive alone. I was wildly surprised.
And a small, free and Russian-language program will help us in searching for the largest files on the computer. Ainvo Disk Explorer.
I warn you right away that this program only searches for the largest files on your computer, but you will have to delete them, as well as determine their degree of need yourself.
But don’t be afraid, there’s nothing wrong with that - I’ll show you everything by personal example, as always.
The main principle: if you don’t know what the file is, don’t touch it.
So, let's go, as Gagarin said...
Download Ainvo Disk Explorer: 3.45 MB
Installation and use Ainvo Disk Explorer
The top checkbox can be removed. We have established it, and congratulations to you. We got a program shortcut on the desktop...
The program has started and you can immediately press “Start”...
...or go to “Settings” and select the drive that will be analyzed for the largest files.
The program will think and think, and will give you the result of its analysis, which you can view by clicking...
And this is where the fun begins...
It turns out that after the “complete” removal of the program recently described on the website, I was left with a “tail” of 85 MB in size on the system disk.
By clicking on “Open directory with file” I ended up in the folder with this harmful file and successfully deleted it.
And this 50 MB “tail” has been hanging on the computer for about a year...
Once upon a time I installed “live wallpaper”.
I also found a backup copy of my smartphone, which I said goodbye to 8 months ago. Do you know what size this file was? 2.5 GB!!! On the system disk!!!
I agree that you need to know and remember which programs have long been removed from your computer, but strain your brains - no program will do this for you.
But I don’t know the origin and purpose of these files, so I don’t touch them.
I also strongly advise against touching files whose address begins with...
A situation very familiar to many... We regularly download a lot of things from the Internet - movies, video games, music, toys, etc. As a result, many are always too lazy to start cleaning their computer from unnecessary information stored on the hard drive, or there is always no time :) As a result, the computer’s hard drives become so full that in Windows Explorer the amount of remaining free space is already marked with a red stripe, i.e. the space is suitable by the end. And it’s good when everything unnecessary accumulates somewhere in one folder (for example, the “Downloads” folder for downloading files from the Internet). But usually, many large files are scattered in batches throughout the hard drive, and then it becomes very inconvenient to determine what exactly takes up the most space and where it is located on the computer. Standard Windows tools do not allow you to quickly assess where the most data is stored on your computer, but there are special third-party programs for this purpose, one of which is WinDirStat, which is free. Using it, you can clearly see which files and in what volume, where exactly they are located on the hard drive, which makes it easy to analyze which of these we no longer need and can be deleted immediately! So, in this article I will show you how to easily estimate what and how much space is taking up on your hard drive, as well as where it is located.
Approximate estimate of disk space occupied by files using the built-in Windows Explorer
I’ll start by showing how, through the built-in Windows Explorer, we could at least roughly estimate where and what is taking up space. To do this, you need to open Windows Explorer and in it, first of all, the “Computer” section (or “My Computer” if Windows XP).
This section displays all local drives that may contain your data. A local disk is like a partition on your hard drive, i.e. part of it. For example, I have 3 local disks (see image above), i.e. the entire hard disk is divided into 3 parts.
You can find out detailed information about what a hard drive is, what it looks like and about other computer devices in a separate article -.
In this window you can immediately see how much space is occupied on each of the local drives and how much space there is in total. If there is not enough space left, the bar under the disk will turn red. For example, my “D” partition is very full, which I use specifically for storing all sorts of personal data. My programs and Windows itself are stored on the “C:” drive.
So, let's go to the disk where the most free space is occupied. Now all that remains is to go through the folders and manually estimate the volume of each. For some reason, Windows does not show through the corresponding “Size” column in Explorer how much space a particular folder takes up. Shows only the size of files present in the open folder. To see how much space a folder takes up, you need to hover the mouse cursor over it and, without clicking, hold the cursor on the folder for about 3 seconds. As a result, information will appear in a pop-up window, where there will be a “Size” item.
This is the disk space that this folder occupies.
Or you can right-click (hereinafter “RMB”) on the folder, then select “Properties” from the context menu.
In the window that opens we will see the size of the folder:
And thus, opening the largest folders one after another, we will eventually see the folder where the largest files are stored, which take up the most disk space. But what if there are many such places? For example, movies in varying quantities are scattered across different folders + games and all sorts of other files. Then the search will become difficult and inconvenient. It’s easier when the user himself roughly remembers where they put what and neatly puts everything into folders, for example, movies and video clips in “Video”, photos in “Images”. And even in this case, you won’t immediately appreciate what, where and how things are going with the files, especially with large hard drives, 1.5 TB or more.
Visual and understandable assessment of disk space occupied by files using the WinDirStat program
The WinDirStat program will allow you to immediately clearly see which folders and files and how much space they take up on all local drives. In this case, you can immediately sort by volume so that the files and folders that take up the most disk space are displayed first. You can also see clearly what kind of files these are by format (video, or something else, for example), as well as many more useful functions...
Downloading and installing the program
The program is installed very simply and does not require any special settings during installation.
You can read more about installing programs for Windows in the article -.
The official website of the program, where you can download it:
In the next window you don’t need to configure anything, just click Next:
In the next two windows we also simply click “Next”.
In the last window, click “Close” to complete the installation:
After installation is complete, the program will launch automatically.
Using the program
The program is very easy to use. When you start the program, you are asked to select which existing hard disk partitions (local drives) will be analyzed. If you store almost everything on one drive, then select “Individual drives”, check the desired drive and click “OK”. But if the data can be scattered across different disks, then it is better to check “All local disks” (1) and click “OK”.
Then the program will begin analyzing the selected hard drive partitions in order to display a complete “picture” of what and where is taking up your space, indicating file formats. The scanning process will be displayed in the form of running yellow pacmen (like from an old computer game):
The analysis process may take several minutes for the first time, but the next time you run the program it will be much faster. After the analysis is completed, the program window will look like this:
The column at the top left directly displays your selected hard drive partitions, indicating the occupied space on each, the number of folders, files, and other information. The column on the right contains information about the types of files that you have on your computer, also indicating the total size for each type of file, their number, and at the same time, a specific color is assigned to each type of file. These colors allow you to clearly see in the window below how much space each type of file takes up.
Analysis of occupied space using a “tree” of files and folders
Let's first consider the main window, i.e. located at the top left.
Here it mainly makes sense to pay attention to the “Size” column, which initially arranges all your disks and folders in them according to the space occupied on the computer, in descending order.
For example, in my example you can see that the total occupied space on all disks is 917.7 GB. In this case, the most space is occupied on disk “D”: 436.1 GB. This can also be seen in the “Percentage” column, i.e. the column shows how much space is occupied on a particular disk out of the total occupied space on all.
By double-clicking on the disk, we open its contents similar to Windows Explorer.
Here we can easily estimate how much space each folder takes up inside, focusing on the same “Size” and “Percentage” columns. And again, the most capacious folders will initially be located at the top for convenience. At the very bottom, accordingly, there will be folders that occupy a minimum of free disk space. The color code in the "Percentage" column indicates the number available within a given folder. The larger the bar, the more folders inside in relation to the number of files. In principle, this is not an indicator that should be focused on.
If there are files in a folder, then for convenience they are grouped as “Files” so that you can open this group and immediately see all the files, and not mixed with folders.
This way, you can quickly assess which drives and folders on them take up the most space on your computer and analyze what exactly is in them, and then delete what you don’t need. To delete an item, you need to right-click on it and select one of the options “Delete (to trash)” or “Delete (permanently).”
In the first case, the items (folders or files) are deleted, as we are accustomed to, to the trash and from there they can then be returned, if necessary. In the second case, the files are permanently deleted, bypassing the recycle bin, and they can only be recovered using special recovery programs, for example “R.Saver” or the paid analogue “R-Studio”.
Analysis of space occupied by files by file type
Using the window on the right in conjunction with the window below, you can visually assess which files (by their type) take up the most disk space. File types will also be ordered by size in descending order, with the files that take up the most space at the top. The truth here is that in order to navigate, you should know what each of the listed file types is, what it is used for and what program it is opened with.
For example, in my image you can see that the MOV (.mov) file format takes up the most space, then the TechSmith Recording (.trec) file, the “Vmware virtual disk file” (.vmdk) file, etc.
“.mov” files, for example, are one of the video file formats that can be produced when recording video from a camera or camera. In principle, they can be opened by any video player. “.trec” files are videos recorded through the Camtasia Studio program (for screen recording, video editing). “.vmdk” are virtual machine files for a free program that allows you to create and run virtual machines WMWare Player (or for the paid analogue WMWare Workstation). Such formats are probably not known to beginners, but most understand, for example, what these formats are such as “JPG” (images), “AVI” (video), “MP3” (audio).
By clicking on one of the file formats, below in the program you will clearly see how these files are distributed across hard drives, their number and total volume compared to others. To do this, each file format has its own color. For example, on the right I selected the ".mov" format (1). and below in the graphic video these files began to be highlighted (2).
It is clearly visible that I have a lot of such files on my disks and they are all of such a medium size. For comparison: much larger squares are displayed in green, but there are fewer of them.
These are the created virtual machine “.vmdk” files. Large squares because these files themselves are much larger in volume than the “.mov” video files on my computer, but they are fewer in number, since the number of green squares is much smaller.
By pointing at one of the squares, the path to the file indicated by this square will be displayed at the bottom of the program window, which is also very convenient. For example, I can immediately see where the largest files on my computer are located.
Conclusion
I think everyone who uses their computer very actively and regularly fills it with some data will appreciate the convenience of analyzing disks through the WinDirStat program. As it turns out, the built-in Windows tools cannot provide such a convenient representation of files and folders located on the computer. But through WinDirStat you can see everything very clearly, and most importantly, it’s understandable literally right away, i.e. you don’t have to spend a long time understanding the program. And the coolest thing is that the program does not need to be configured, because by default everything is configured, in my opinion, ideally, i.e. all the necessary information is displayed.
Have a nice day and good mood! :)
