SequoiaView is a great (and free) tool you may have seen before. It graphically shows you how big each file is in a given drive or folder. This is so much better than using Windows Search to find large files to delete – and it’s more fun too. You can bet I’ll be getting rid of the Visual Studio Orcas Beta 1 image that’s consuming over half of the map below:
WinDirStat is a similar tool, and also free. It seems to take quite a bit longer to scan a drive than SequoiaView, and you can’t just type in a folder path, which would be nice. However, the tree view is an easy alternative for drilling down to specific folders, and most people would probably prefer this option (but I think a hybrid approach would be better). When you select a folder in the treeview, a rectangular area that represents the folder is highlighted in the treemap. So you can easily tell how much of the total drive space is consumed by a particular folder. The color coding in this tool is great: because it’s based on file type, you can quickly see which file types are taking up the most space.
Innovatools diskSpace explorer 3.0 is not free; the Home edition for use on a single PC. The [more expensive] Network edition allows an administrator to view disk space usage across multiple PCs, and manage/delete files remotely. One unique feature: this application can predict how much space could be saved by using a different file system.
