Looking for a visual filemanagement tool

November 5, 2005 10:37 PM

I am looking for a file management tool that will help me clear some space on the hard drive of my WinXP laptop.

I have a 60Gb hard drive and I am running out of space. I have deleted lots of stuff, and the situation is under control now, but I know I will run into this problem again soon. The thing is: my directory structure is a mess, and has always been like that. What I need is a tool that will help me in my "housekeeping" chores. Windows Explorer just won't cut it.

I remember that for Win 3.1, back in the dark ages, I had a shareware that would show your directory structure as a visual map, where larger directories (in total file size) would be represented by larger squares, and you could click on these squares to navigate through your HD, making the cleaning process a breeze.

Does anyone know of any tool that can help me?

posted by falameufilho to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

SequoiaView
posted by whatisish at 10:48 PM on November 5, 2005

TreeSize Professional is a superb tool.
posted by gnash at 10:57 PM on November 5, 2005

Best answer: SpaceMonger is Freeware and works well.
posted by Yorrick at 11:23 PM on November 5, 2005

sounds like windirstat - it starts off with a tree display + pacmen, then once it's read everything you get the map of squares you remember.
posted by andrew cooke at 3:36 AM on November 6, 2005

SequoiaView is a great program but it hasn't been updated since 2002 and it shows - it's a little rough around the edges.

JDiskReport is not bad either.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:28 AM on November 6, 2005

Not a direct answer to your question, but this may be useful information. If you have ever had hibernation enabled, there may be a really large hibernat.dat file on C:\. if you don't use hibernation, it can be deleted. I find hibernation unrelibale; YMMV. You might benefit from a USB external hard drive to use for backing up the laptop drive. Just remember, the hard drive is mechanical, and mechanical things fail.
posted by theora55 at 9:18 AM on November 6, 2005

I used to use DiskPie before it became un-freewared. Now I use EasyCleaner, which does the same thing and more. Give it a shot!
posted by hoborg at 9:23 AM on November 6, 2005

I second Yorrick's Spacemonger suggestion. I use it all the time.
posted by parma at 9:27 AM on November 6, 2005

Also WinDirStat. It's like SequioaView, but also with a text listing of directories.
posted by Boobus Tuber at 12:04 PM on November 6, 2005

Spacemonger is great.
posted by blag at 2:28 PM on November 6, 2005