1572. Visualize Hard Drive Usage

My harddrive keeps filling up with stuff and I don't want to rebuild my computer with a larger drive.  Is there easy way to see what is taking up the most amount of space so I can get rid of that material?

I've seen your hard drive and I think your collection of kitten photos is taking up most of the hard drive space because photos do take up a little space and I’m sure there are a few videos here and there too. 

Videos also take up a lot of space as do audio files. The fact is that sometimes these things get scattered all over your hard drive and it’s hard to find them. There are utilities both for Windows and Mac computers that will help you visually locate where the largest files are so you can get rid of them. 

For the Windows computer there is a utility called WinDirStat, its free, we have a link to it and several others on our website. I found this very useful. I can only suggest however that you don’t just find the largest files and delete them because you might delete some important file. You need to do some research before you start clicking and deleting. 

There is also similar utilities for the Mac. I use one called DaisyDisk, it gives a nice visual representation of all of my files so I can see where the biggest ones are sitting on the drive. Again, don’t delete without checking first and please, backup your computer’s hard drive before you delete anything at all!

Windows solution:

Mac solution: