SpaceSniffer

Topic

New Reply

SpaceSniffer is a free disk scanning utility that can visually show you how much space you files and folders take up. It uses a Treemap visualization layout so you have an immediate perception of where big folders and files are situated on your devices.

It is a Windows application and does not require insdtallation.

Reply | Quote

Replies

OK, I’ll ask the bumb question:
Why does it matter WHERE the big files are? Can I do anyhting about them if I know where they are?

Reply | Quote

Why does it matter WHERE the big files are? Can I do anyhting about them if I know where they are?

To answer the second part: Defraggler has a feature which enables files above a user-specified size to be moved towards the end of a partition. Presumably this leaves the front of the partition available for all the smaller files to fight it out between them…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

Reply | Quote

OK, I’ll ask the bumb question:
Why does it matter WHERE the big files are? Can I do anyhting about them if I know where they are?

It does matter! When you run out of space you will probably wonder what the heck is taking up so much space. Scanning your drive with SpaceSniffer (or with my favourite, Sequoiaview) will tell you where the bad guys are. It’s then up to you to delete them.

I think these programs were more useful some years ago when disk space was a more serious concern. Then you would find that a bunch of temp files residing out of the %temp% folder, which did not amount to much considered individually, would take up considerable space. You would also find that some application was creating temp files here and there. If you were not much into it, perhaps you would realize there was something called Outlook.pst and wow, is that file big! BTW, pagefile.sys @ 2 GB??? What is THAT doing there and why can’t I get rid of it? Googling a little bit you would gain an understanding of many of the devils taking over your disk space. You could then delete them and probably plan in advance what to store, what not to, and periodic cleanups.

I use Sequoiaview once a year or so, and after 7 years it still feels cool!

Reply | Quote

Thanks Diegol,

I was thinking that the question of ‘where?’ refered to the physical location of the files and that was why I wanted to know why that would be important.

But now I see that what you meant was the location of the files in the directory structure, and that makes a lot more sense.

Thank you

Johanna

Reply | Quote

You are welcome.

I mentioned big file deletion but omitted referring to compression, which is a more common approach in my case. I remember examining an old 8-Gig disk looking for files to compress. When I was done I had freed about 1 Gig or so, ie, about 12.5% of disk space. Of course after a couple years this wouldn’t suffice either, but it helped to lenghten the life of the HD a little bit back then.

Reply | Quote