Use WinDirStat to Clean Up Hard Drive. Today’s hard drives are large and can store tons of files, pictures, videos, etc. But, even with all this space there still may be a time when you need to clean up because the hard drive is filling up. There are the obvious places to check like. Sep 07, 2011 Discuss: Clean up your Windows hard drive with WinDirStat Sign in to comment. Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. We delete comments that violate our policy, which we encourage you to.
WDS shows a certain item labelled “<Unknown>” and recently someone posted a comment asking for details:
i think it would be nice to put in the faq or in help or in some docs what’s in the <unknown> space
sometimes it’s an huge amount of space! like 700 or more MB ! i think it could be the “system volume information” but! what mysterous things are within this space? he he he!
This mysterious item is just the difference between what Windows reports as the free space on the volume minus size of the files WDS can access. Please note the part WDS can access! This is the important point here. WDS cannot access the files under
System Volume Information
on all the (NTFS?) drives, so it cannot sum up the sizes of these items. And by the way, we have had reports of up to 30 GB of “<Unknown>” space.Now what is stored in this directory? If you could gain
SYSTEM
access (and I will not tell you how that is possible …), you would see that the system keeps some binary log files there, but these take up only a small portion of what is stored in there. The biggest portion is usually being taken up by the System Restore Points (SRPs) you can create (or that are automatically created by software installers). The contents are a dump of the registry at the time the SRP was taken and of relevant files (usually from the system folders). I personally turned this feature of since I have a different backup strategy – however, this may not apply to everyone, so you’ll have to live with the “<Unknown>” item :mrgreen:.There also have been reports that some third-party software stores data there, but I cannot confirm this. Also in the very unlikely case that your file system is corrupt there may be a non-zero sized “<Unknown>” item. In that latter case run a file system check and the problems should be fixed afterwards.
May 12, 2017 WinDirStat Clean Up Panel. As you can see, it's very simple to complete any of the aforementioned steps. However, I'd suggest you use Windows' default cleaning options and tools as they're more reliable and there's a small chance you might delete the wrong files to reclaim disk space on your Windows 10 PC. Use WinDirStat to Clean Up Hard Drive Today’s hard drives are large and can store tons of files, pictures, videos, etc. But, even with all this space there still may be a time when you need to clean up because the hard drive is filling up.
// Oliver
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PS: If you run under a non-privileged account this could also cause a lot of files to be inaccessible and therefore to count as “<Unknown>” …
You’d probably agree with us if we’d say that it’s easier to fill up your storage space than to clean it up. After all, with plenty of files and folders on your drive, how can you tell what specific item is taking up much space?
Chess band parts pdf. Well, this is where WinDirStat comes in handy.
What is WinDirStat
WinDirStat is a freeware created for Windows devices. It scans your hard drives and displays a detailed report, indicating what files and folders are taking up space on your disk. It shows the data in a colorful graph.
So, what does WinDirStat do? With this tool, you can easily identify storage hogs, allowing you to delete them within the application folder.
How to Use WinDirStat
We know how excited you are to try and use WinDirStat. So, here you go. Let these steps guide you in using WinDirStat:
- Download WinDirStat here and install it.
- Select the recommended installation.
- Once installed, launch WinDirStat.
- Choose the drive that you want to check and evaluate.
- Hit OK.
- Wait as the program scans your selected drive.
- Once the scan is complete, you will be shown a summary of the results on your screen. By default, the list is sorted by file size. If you click on an item, you can find out which files are taking up the most space.
- As soon as you identify the space-hoggers on your PC, right-click on them and select Delete to Recycle Bin for later disposal or Delete (no way to undelete) for permanent deletion.
Ideally, you should use this tool once a month to clean up any files that you no longer need. This works best with a PC repair tool that optimizes your PC and gets rid of unwanted files lurking on your system.
Pros and Cons of WinDirStat
There are many things that you’ll love about WinDirStat. But as with most software programs, it also has some downsides. We’ve listed them below:
Pros
- It installs quickly.
- It can support multiple file types of varying sizes.
- You can freely choose what specific hard drive to scan. This is very useful if you have multiple drives on your PC.
- It allows you to scan a single folder instead of the entire drive.
- It allows you to easily delete files from a certain application folder.
Cons
- It only works on Windows.
- Scans often take time to complete.
- It does not have a portable version.
- You cannot save the scan results for later use.
Other Things You Should Know About WinDirStat
Before you proceed with installing WinDirStat, here are more details that you might be interested in:
- It supports almost all Windows OS versions, from Windows 95 to Windows 10.
- You can scan multiple or individual hard drives.
- You can scan external hard drives, too!
- You can conveniently browse through files and folders the same way as you would in Windows Explorer. The only difference is that it sorts the folders by total size.
- It allows you to quickly copy the path of a file or folder.
- It has a cleanup menu that provides a way to access files and folders from within the tool.
- It displays up to 2 million subitems in a directory.
- You can change the colors for every directory listing within the tool’s settings.
- You can customize the height, style, and brightness of the utility.
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Verdict
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So, is WinDirStat worth it? For us, it definitely is, especially that we usually don’t have the luxury of time to organize our files and folders. At the end of the day, the decision to whether or not install it depends on your personal preferences and your system needs. Msi n1996 motherboard bios update download.
Here’s one final takeaway before ending this post. Make it a habit to run regular malware scans using an anti-malware tool. By doing so, you can reduce the chances of seeing suspicious files and folders as you browse through WinDirStat.
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Have you used WinDirStat before? Compress 1 0 2 – image compression stockings. Share your experience in the comment section below.
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