Download: Find space hogging folders with Folder Size

We're often left wondering where on the space on our hard disks has gone. Finding this out can be really difficult because there are no tools for this on Windows beyond opening Folder Properties.

Folder Size scans a folder or entire disk and shows how the space has been used with proportionally sized boxes. It is also a useful replacement for the Folder Size plugin for Windows Explorer as this no longer works in Windows 7.

The folder location must be entered by hand, which might put off some beginners.The Explore button opens Windows Explorer at the current location. The easiest way of entering a folder into Folder Size is to find it in Windows Explorer and then copy and paste it. Click in a blank area of the address bar to the right of the current location to reveal the full folder path. This can then be copied into Folder Size

Once Folder Size has finished scanning the hard disk you can zoom in and out with the mouse scroll wheel and move around by clicking and dragging. Right-clicking anywhere in the window resets the view.

Being able to zoom in is pretty much essential because of the number of folders on computers. The information in smaller folders is very hard to see otherwise. The view does not always scale that well so you have to zoom in quite close to see the size taken up by the folder.

A helpful new tool is the folder activity colouring. Folders are coloured depending on when they were last used. This is a great help in identifying what can be deleted or archived.

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