Check the size of your folders

For some time now I have been using the open source program Folder Size, available on Sourceforge, to display the size of folders on my system.

It worked great for that purpose but it taxed the PC a lot when it was running and calculating the size of each folder it displayed in its interface.

This was extremely annoying when I was opening folders in explorer that were having many subfolders and files in them. It took some time and slowed down my system as it integrated right into the default file manager.

I therefore made the decision to uninstall Folder Size and started to look for an alternative that would provide me with the same information but in a less-taxing way.

I found Folder Size, yes it is using the same name as the original program, and it does exactly what I want it to do. 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 that are stored by it. You can then switch between folders to display the size of 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 want to only see the biggest folders containing certain types of files such as mp3 files or temporary files you can simply use one of the many filters that are being made available to do so.

You can edit the existing filters to add new file types to the filter, or create new ones by editing the FolderSizeFilters text file. Just add a new line at the end and add one or multiple file types 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.

Use Treesize Free as an alternative that you can run independently.

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