Best Windows Utilities: Visualize Drive Space with Visual Directory Explorer
January 29th, 2008Earlier today I was gathering together several Windows utilities that I always install on any server I maintain or work on regularly. These are some sweet little programs that make my life a whole lot easier so I thought it might be nice to share them with you over the next couple days.
The first of these incredibly useful utilities is called Visual Directory Explorer — VisDir for short. I have a handful of servers that seem to run out of hard drive space every few days. I am not the only one using these servers so it can be difficult to track down where this data is on the drive in order to clean some of it out. I remember one time when the files were hidden so well that I was positive that the drive was bad and it was misreporting how much space was left. I remember thinking to myself, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I had a utility that would give me a picture of where all the data is on a drive so I wouldn’t have to dig through a million directories searching for who-knows-what?” That is when I found VisDir. VisDir searches drives or folders on a drive and creates a pie chart of each sub-folder and file representing how much space these items are taking up on the drive. You can then click on a slice (a sub-folder) and view the contents of that folder as a new pie. In my earlier example, I saw that Documents and Settings was taking up a vast amount of space. From there I dug into a particular profile and then all the way down to the temporary files created by Internet Explorer. VisDir was a lifesaver! I use the program all the time now.
The Visual Directory Explorer is a free application created by Scott Baker and can be downloaded from http://www.sb-software.com/visdir/.
