When you are examining your disk space usage to find the files/folders which are sucking up all the space, using a graphical/mapping disk usage utility can be very helpful for quickly locating the culprits. A nice open source utility for this, if you do not already have a tool you prefer, is KDirStat (Linux users) and WinDirStat (Windows users).
If you are not sure what a mapping disk usage utility does, just take a look at the screenshots on the applicable tool. Basically it gives you a graphical representation of the space used by files and folders by drawing proportionally sized boxes. Big boxes use a lot of space and small boxes do not use much. If you click on a box, you can jump to the respective file or folder.
This type of tool can be very useful when you are trying to clean up disk space.
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For Windows it’s hard to go past the Freeware application Distective (http://www.disktective.com/)
From their website:
“Description
Running out of disk space? Don’t know what’s eaten it? Then run Disktective, our award-winning disk-reporting tool, to trace used-up space on your system.
With Disktective you can find out the real size of your directories and distribution of used space inside them. Each directory may contain hundreds of subdirectories each containing many files. Simply run Disktective and let Disktective create a complete report displaying the real sizes of all directories and their containing subdirectories. “
This is a true lifesaver
Thank you.
(is it just me, or does Vista get clogged up WAY too quickly?)