2007-04-24

My must have utils - Part 2

This time, I'll write a bit about another of those tools I can't live without: TreeSizePro.
I like to be in control of what's going on on my computer, rather than have it decide what's best for me. That's how I knew that Delphi 2007 PRO's default full install requires 3.6 GB free HDD space, even though there's only around 700 MB worth of CodeGear stuff. Using TreeSizePro it's child's play to find that out: I start by scanning the target hard-drive and Save the report as XML; then, I install the tool(s) I want and finally I run another scan of the hard-drive. When it's done (usually a few seconds), i use the built-in option to compare that snapshot with the previously saved one. And voilá! Couldn't be easier: not only you'll find out how much space that install is using, but, more importantly, where was that space spent... Like, in the above example, 2 GB of cached install files...

Other nice features:
  1. Integrates with explorer, so I can right-click on a folder/drive and run it there;
  2. You can automatically expand/hide all folders above/below a certain threshold;
  3. You can see where your space is going (top 100 files), what types of files use what space, how are your files taking space distributed by file age;
  4. You can see the number of files or space used or percentage of space used;
  5. You can see file usage by users, should you have several users on your computer (also runs on servers);
  6. Schedule scans to occur at some time/date or with a certain frequency;
  7. Export to Excel, HTML, Text, XML;
  8. Search for Biggest/Oldest/Temporary files;
  9. There's even a limited (in functionality) Freeware version if you don't want to spend any money...
And a lot more options. Go there, try it and see for yourself. If you don't want/can't spend money on such a tool, get the free version even though the Personal version is cheap enough not to be without it!... If your drive has limited space or if you just like to know where that space is going, just give it a spin...

[Edit]: Forgot to mention that this one is another one of those utils that I run without installing first: D:\Utils\TreeSize...

Here are a few appetizer images:


2 comments:

Stuart Kelly said...

WinDirStat is a free open source alternative to TreeSize.

Cheers Stu

Fernando Madruga said...

Thks for the link Stu.

It does have one nice and fun feature: the treemap view! Kind of weird at first, but kind of fun too!

Still, It doesn't do snapshot save/compares, so one of the things I use TreeSizePro for I wouldn't be able to do there.

But it can be a good alternative if someone does not want to spend some money for TreeSize as it looks more fun that the free version of TreeSize! :)