FolderUsage is a free program for the Windows operating system that can provide you with the information in a heartbeat. All you need to do to get started is to select a root folder on your system before hitting the analyze button.

The program then displays folder and file information in two separate columns in the program window.

The left column displays information about the root folder and all subfolders. This includes their name, size, subfolder and file count. The program sorts the folders from largest size wise to lowest.

The right column displays file a folder and file listing of the selected folder. A right-click opens a context menu with options to open or delete selected files, and to change the display size from Megabytes to Bytes, Kilobytes or Gigabytes.

The Filter option of the Tools menu offers another interesting option. It can be used to only include files in the generation of information that match the filters. This ranges from file creation and access dates over file sizes and regular expressions.

You could use the filtering options to only include select file types in the scan, which would basically allow you to find the largest folders with those file types in the selected directory structure.

Not everything is golden though. Deleting and opening files for instance is only linked to the mouse context menu. Options to use the keyboard would be useful. As would be the integration of the filter menu directly in the program interface, and export options.

Looking for alternatives? Try programs like Folder Size, Used Hard Drive Space by Folder or Visualize Hard Drive Space instead.

Windows users can download the latest version of FolderUsage from the developer website. (via Addictive Tips) FolderUsage runs only on systems that have the Microsoft .Net Framework 4.0 installed.

MOBZHunt is a free program for Windows that does what Windows Explorer cannot: It calculates the size of all folders stored under a root directory that the user of the software specifies. This way it is possible to find the largest folder of the c: drive, the my documents folder or any other folder, partition or drive that is accessible on the computer system.

The program is fairly easy to operate. All you need to do is to enter a drive letter or path, or use the browse for folder button to select a folder from the computer.

A click on open scans the path and computes the space requirements of every folder located under that root path.

The left sidebar lists the folders, while the right the folders of the currently selected root folder. Information laid out there includes the folder name, total size and the last modification date. A click on the any folder opens the very same information for that folder’s subfolders.

The status bar lists the total site requirements, number of folders and files of the root folder. MOBZHunt is a handy program for Windows users who want to find the largest folders on their Windows system. This can be helpful to find folders that can be deleted to free up space on the system.

The software program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 to be installed on the system.

Drive Sort on the other hand can do that as well plus display the newest files of a folder or hard drive which can come in handy in numerous occasions.

The portable software program for the Windows operating system will display either the 100 newest or 100 largest files of the selected folder or drive.

Both operations can be completed in two steps. The computer user needs to select a drive letter or folder of a local hard drive first and then if Drive Sort shall sort the files by size or date.

The process completes in a few seconds, sometimes more than that depending on the files stored in the selected folder or on the hard drive.

The top 100 files are then displayed in the program’s interface with their filename, size, date of creation and file path. A double-click on a file will open it with the default viewer, a right-click can be used to either open the files as well or open the folder containing the selected file.

Drive Sort is a tiny 9 Kilobyte application that is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The software can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website.

Treesize is partition based which means that it scans the selected partition and displays the folders of that partition in a tree view sorted by the size of the files contained in the folder and possible subfolders. A plus in front of a folder means that subfolders exist. All subfolders can be expanded as well so that the user can see which subfolder of the current folder occupies most of the space on that partition.

A right-click menu is offered that provides several interesting features. It is possible to expand all folders in the selected structure and display a folder count. Explore opens a new Windows Explorer window of the select folder which makes it easy to delete files that are no longer needed.

Another interesting option is to switch between several folder size views. The default view displays the size of the folders. Other available views are a file count which displays the folders with the most files on top, a cluster size view and the size in percentages. Items can be sorted by name or size and the values can be either shown in Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes or custom metrics.

Treesize is one of those programs that you run from time to time when hard drive or partition space is getting low. Compatible to Windows 95 to Windows Vista.

I managed to find a free software that would do exactly what I needed. It is called Folder Size as well which could lead to some confusion. The biggest advantage is that it displays the size of the folders only if you run the application which can slow down the system as well but only at this time and not constantly. So, you double-click a drive or folder and Folder Size calculates the size of all folders and subfolders. You can then switch between folders to display the site of its subfolders as well.

The software is pretty easy to use. One nice feature is the so called filter list which can filter for special file types only. If you wanted for instance to only see the biggest folders that contain mp3 files or temp files you would simply use one of the many filters that are available there. You can edit the existing filters to add new file types to the filter or create new ones by editing the FolderSizeFilters textfile. Just add a new line at the end and add some filetypes to it.

Folder Size does not need to be installed, just run it from any location. The size of the application is only 300 K, works in Windows XP. Not sure about other operating systems. The developer does not mention the supported operating systems on the site.

Update: The Folder Size alternative is no longer available. The developer website returns a 404 not found error. The original Folder Size application on the other hand is still available for download at Sourceforge. It is recommended to use this program instead.

The folder size of my Inbox for instance with 100 mails was more than 500 megabytes which could not be true at all. I remembered that Thunderbird did not delete the mails even though they would have been deleted in the trash. This was the cause for the discrepancy between the meager amount of mails and their size and the big huge mail folders on my c: partition.

The solution nevertheless is pretty easy. All that needs to be done is compact the folders which removes all deleted mails immediately. I was able to reduce the folder size of my Thunderbird folders from more than 3 gigabytes to 300.000 kilobytes freeing up valuable disk space on my main partition.

Just right-click a folder and select compact this folder to remove all deleted emails and keep only emails that are visible in Thunderbird. You could check the Disk Space option to automatically compact folders if that saves a defined amount of kilobytes. (You find the option under the advanced tab and offline & disk space tab in the Thunderbird options).

Folder Size Gives a New View in Windows Explorer

Folder Size is a useful shell extension which provides the addition of a “Folder Size” column in Windows Explorer. This column clearly displays to full size of folders in the details view. The advantage of this for disk cleanup is unmistakable. The largest files are the first to asses for removal in a cleanup process. This makes the whole task of freeing up hard drive space much easier but also gives you a view of large files which may contain certain documents that you may be looking for. This extension simply replaces the standard File size column with Folder Size. The only drawback is that it works for Windows 2000 and XP and no other Windows versions.

Download and run Folder Size 2.4 from this URL: http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/

Run the downloaded file and this will start the install wizard. It is very plain and uncomplicated. Simply continue clicking Next until the installation is finished. Then everything just disappears and you have to do more to get it going.

There is a bit of work involved to implement Folder Size once you have downloaded it. No desktop icon or tray icon will be listed and it will not be in the program list in the Start menu. At first, it may seem that the installation failed completely. Follow these steps to set the Folder Size column in Windows Explorer.

The Folder Size column is available in Explorer, but it is not visible at all. When you open an Explorer window, be sure that it is in Details view so that you can clearly see the columns and the headers. When you right-click on the column headers, a list of additional columns to add will be displayed in a drop down menu. Go to the file size column header and right-click to get the drop down menu options and choose Folder Size. To replace the existing Size column with Folder Size, uncheck “Size” in the list if it is not already unchecked. Next, drag the Folder Size column header to where Size was.

Click on the Tools menu and select Folder Options. In the View tab, click Apply to All Folders. You will now see the Folder Size column where the file size column was located and the detailed full size of all folders is presented in the list.

To change the settings for Folder Size, open the Control Panel and switch to Classic View from the left pane. This will make finding Folder Size much easier. Double-click the listing for Folder Size to access the settings.

This will open two windows which will allow you to alter the way sizes are displayed in the column. It will also give you the option to stop or start the service to eliminate background activity.

That is all you need to know except for how to remove Folder Size 2.4. Remove it the same way you would any other program. Go to the Control Panel and use Add or Remove Programs to remove Folder Size. The columns in Explorer will have to be fixed manually.