Folder Size Windows 10 Review and Techniques December 9, 2020June 3, 2021 Raza Ali Kazmi App Reviews Folder Size is a free application that displays the storage space occupied by each drive and folder on your hard disk. It is a free disk analyzer that shows how much percentage of the partitions on your hard drive is occupied, and how much portion is devoid of any files. Product Spotlight (Duplicate Files): Use Sorcim’s Clone Files Checker to clean empty folders and remove 1000s of duplicate documents in your PC. Clone Files Checker follows Google Software Principles. It will not ask you to provide email address to download the software. Folder Size Features Free-up Storage: If you’re running into low storage issues, Folder Size will help you free-up the space occupied by unneeded files and make room for newer files. Efficiently Organize your Files: Analyzing the remaining free space will help you better organize your files. Regularly analyzing your files will help you quickly search for files and improve your productivity. System Diagnostic: Windows operating system, the programs and games installed on your computer need sufficient storage to run. Your computer may encounter problems whenever it runs on low storage space. When this problem occurs, Folder Size will help you analyze the storage and delete unneeded files to free up your storage. The user interface of Folder Size is mainly divided into three areas- the main window, a topmost toolbar, and a tree view on the left. For each drive on your computer, you’ll be able to see how much of storage is allocated, how much is actually used, and how much is free. Why Folder Size? File Explorer does not keep a track of your folder sizes. As a result, you need to right-click each folder, select the Properties option to calculate and display the folder size information. It further takes a lot of time to calculate the size of your folder, especially if it contains too many files, sub-folders. Folder Size runs a background service that keeps a real-time record of the folder and file size on your hard disk and displays it quickly whenever you select a file or folder. In addition to file size information, it allows you to export the folders’ list along with sizes into a CSV format. You can open the CSV file in Microsoft Excel to review the folders list and analyze which files/ folders are taking a lot of disk space. Not just that, you can analyze files by filtering them by their type, day and other parameters. You can also configure Folder Size to calculate different file hashes such as MD5, SHA1, SHA256 and SHA512. File hashes are commonly used to identify whether a file’s content has been changed or not. The in-house utility in Windows, Disk Check-Up, calculates file hashes of important system files to determine whether a system file has been corrupted or not, and accordingly replaces it with the original version of the file stored on the installation media. Compatibility The program supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the following operating systems: Windows 10 Windows 8 Windows 7 Windows Vista Windows XP Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2008 Steps To analyze a drive, folder or file for storage information, do the following procedure: Download and install Folder Size. Launch Folder Size and select a drive (for example, D:\) Click on the Scan icon. Folder Size will start analyzing your drive. The process can take some time depending on the size of data stored on your drive. Once the process has been completed, you’ll be able to see the storage space information in a Tree View manner. Folder Size will display the following information for each folder on your computer: Total Files: The number of files stored in a folder. Storing more files in a folder can take more time to load all thumbnails, and slow down the system performance. It’s better to store your files in multiple folders instead of one single folder. Folders: Represents the total number of subfolders within a folder. Creation Date: Represents the date of creation of a file or folder. Modification Date: Represents the last date of modification of a file or folder. Attributes: Attributes are metadata associated with a file or folder stored on your hard disk that allow or disallow certain privileges to the user. For instance: A file marked with the “Read-only” attribute will be viewable and not editable unless that attribute is discarded. Similarly, a user can mark files with archive, system, hidden, system attributes, as required. Archive attributes are used to inform Windows to backup a particular file/ folder. System attributes are given to operating system files and components which are required for the smooth functioning of the operating system. The Hidden attribute is used to hide a file or folder from the user’s view. Remember, hidden files can still be viewable by changing system settings to show hidden files. File Owner: Author of the selected file. You can use the navigation buttons to easily navigate through different directories, as you like. Underneath the main window, you’ll be able to see a detailed chart diagram about storage usage. You can even print the charts or export them to a file. Remember, the charting feature requires Adobe Flash Player to be installed on your computer. Alongside the Folder Size application, you’ll also be able to see a new column in the File Explorer that displays folder and file size information. Folder Size automatically starts a background service that continuously monitors files and folders for changes, and builds a cache of size changes. So, you’ll instantly get file size information for each folder and file on your hard disk. Limitations As a free application, you can expect the updates can sometimes be irregular. Some users have reported error messages every time they loaded File Explorer. It could be because of the technical glitches or compatibility issues with your system, or an issue with starting the Folder Size background service in the background. If you encounter such an issue, try uninstalling and reinstalling the program.