How can I tell what's taking up so much disk space?

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I cleaned up my disk and i ticked the compression of old files. Is that a problem? I also installed adobe acrobat 6 pro and when i entered Outlook it said that i have to accept some macros from adobe, it never asked me to accept anything before despite that i had adobe reader 7 installed, it says something about pdf.dot. Anyway, after that i recovered my pc to a date that i hadnt installed acrobat 6 pro and when i opened outlook it said the same (it wasnt supposed to say anything, because in the recovery date no acrobat 6 was installed). Is there something i can do to sort things out? Thanks in advance.

diruse provides some cursory information about disk usage, but my favorite app for keeping track of disk usage (on my local computer and across my network) is Disk Triage. The app allows you to trend disk usage and watch for specific file types filling up hard disk space. Graphing and charts provides visual information about where your drive space is being used over time and in general offers some of the best details I've ever found for keeping unnecessary files from clogging my hard drive. It's not free, but the file management is well worth the price. Combining it with an app like the free DupKiller to eliminate duplicate files and you've got an optimized solution for keeping your disk space usage to a minimum.

Or the reason might be the files/directories saved by the System Restore NT-service, i.e. this folder is to used to store various system/configuration changes.

If you want to get the space back, i.e., get rid of all those files under directory usually named "\System Volume Information\" (however, note that you can't browse it), and located in root of a NTFS-formatted drive, one just needs to disable or stop the System Restore service (or just set it to Manual startup-type), reboot and enable/start it again; of course if one is confident enough to mess with "services.msc". Another option is however, to only delete all the "restore points". Ah yes, and just as a further information; also note that these files/directories cannot be defragmented by Windows built-in defrag program.

best regards,
Ivan Tadej, Slovenija, Europe
http://www.tadej-ivan.tk

This solution is simply not good enough! The best way to find out your disk usage is like Jake Ludington said, use a disk space analyser, except the one he mentionned, "Disk Triage" is software. I'm using (since 3 years now) a FREEWARE called TreeSize and its available here:http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml. It shows you a Directory tree listing with its size and percentage of space on the left, it also orders the directories from biggest to smallest. It is very useful and simple to use, I recommended to anyone who wants to free up space!

By far the best tool to know what is taking up space on your hard drive is ZTREE, an old program which was developed during the early DOS years and originally called XTREE.

Among many other easy to use features, this program allows the user to list all files in order of size, date, name or extension. It is also easy to put in file specs such as *.tmp and *.bak or *.swp and view all such files with the goal of conveniently deleting those of no value with a few simple key strokes.

Some of the particular disk cleaning operations which are made possible by this program are to look for duplicate files located in two or more directories or partitions, copying selected files or groups of files to other drives or CDs while preserving their tree structure, or quickly determining which files have been modified on a given day to allow an incremental backup of a full day's work in less than a minute.

Although other disk maintenance programs may have more modern interfaces, nothing can compare with the effectiveness and ease of use as ZTREE (note: I have no affiliation with the authors or sellers of this program.)

In keeping with the tree idea my favourite disk space app is the sleeper "Sequoiaview".
With A beautifuly colored graphic interface it makes searching for large files as easy as looking at a picture.and best of all it's free from http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

That's an "interesting" display they use. HOWEVER I almost gave up on them totally because of the popup ad that was totally blocking my access to their site. BAD BAD behaviour ... especially for a university.

I really like WinDirStat. It is free open-source software pulished under the GNU General Public License. It allows you to sort files/folders by size, percentage of disk space, etc. It also provides a graphical view that makes spotting the space hogging culprits a piece of cake.

You can download it at http://windirstat.sourceforge.net/

Can I also add JDiskReport:

http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/

It's pretty nifty on the analysis side.

Hi,
I was having a problem regarding this disk space. My drive was 4.65 and only .5 gb was left empty. I tried disabling the Sytem Restore on all drives. Instantly the free space became 1.88 gb. And I haven't tried a scan disk or even a reboot. Thanks Ivan, your suggestions saved me.

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