Disk Tools

WinDirStat is a visual drive space manager that uses treemaps to represent each file as a colored rectangle, allowing you to instantly visualize file distribution across an entire drive or folder. In addition, the file types are color coded and can be clicked to reveal file name and details with options to access via Windows Explorer, copy the path, or to delete the file. The concept is very similar to SequoiaView, however it provides additional folder tree access and an easier to use interface, as well as right-click integration via SendTo menu.

Ever wondered why your hard disk is full? Or what directory is taking up most of the space? When using conventional disk browsing tools, such as Windows Explorer, these questions may be hard to answer. With SequoiaView however, they can be answered almost immediately. SequoiaView uses a visualization technique called cushion treemaps to provide you with a single picture of the entire contents of your hard drive. You can use it to locate those large files that you haven t accessed in one year, or to quickly locate the largest picture files on your drive. When using Windows Explorer, the user cannot obtain a global overview of the entire contents of his disk, because the number of files and directories that can be shown simultaneously is limited by the available screen space. Treemaps make more efficient use of the available screen space. Instead of showing a file system as a long list of files and directories, files are displayed as rectangles, with the size of the rectangle being proportional to the size of the file. We can then display more information at once if we use all available space. The program also allows you to apply different color schemes to easily identify certain file types.

DriveImage XML enables you create a complete backup image of any logical drive or partition, allowing to to restore your entire operating system along with installed programs, user settings, registry and all. You can restore the image later to the same or a different drive, and also choose to copy the drive directly to another one. The program includes an image explorer that lets you open previously created backup images and extract individual files. DriveImage XML can use volume locking or Volume Shadow Services (VSS) to create the backup image from within Windows, without the need to reboot. The program stores your images in .dat files, using XML format, allowing you to process them with 3rd party applications.

JDiskReport is a disk analysis utility, that allows you to view disk space usage with the help of graphical, interactive pie charts. It allows you to quickly find the largest, oldest or newest files and gather statistics about file sizes and types for each drive. You can choose between different graphical charts or text reports.

EASEUS Partition Manager enables you to configure and manage partitions on your hard drive(s). You delete or format, and also resize and move your partitions. If you do not have any free disk space you can reduce the size of an existing partition, and use the unallocated disk space to create new or enlarged partitions to better manage your data. In addition, you can view disk and partition properties, set an active partition, change drive letters and more. EASEUS Partition Manager can be run from within Windows, but also includes an option to create a bootable CD, that allows you to manage your partitions before Windows loads (may be needed for certain changes).

Hardlink Shell Extension enables advanced users to create NTFS hard links under Windows 2000/XP without the need for the Windows Resource Kit. It installs as a dynamic shell extension that lets you picks the file or folder to be used for the hard link and drop it in the destination folder. It supports HardLinks, Junctions, and SymbolicLinks. Hard Links are a built-in, but not easily accessible feature of the Windows operating system and allow multiple references to a single file. You should be familiar with the concept of hard links to make use of this software.

Active@ Hard Disk Monitor checks and monitors the status of your S.M.A.R.T. hard drives and provides you with a detailes analysis of current conditions and temperatures. The program takes advantage of your drive`s S.M.A.R.T. capabilities and can monitor hard disk parameters such as Temperature, Head Flying Height and Spin-Up Time. If the values reach a critical threshold, the program can notify you by pop-up window or email message. Active@ Hard Disk Monitor provides an easy-to-read interface that also displays other hard drive properties as well as the overall health status for each disk.

TreeSize tells you how your disk space is being used. It can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of the selected folder, including its subfolders. Each folder can be expanded in Explorer-like manner to view the size of its subfolders. Scanning is done in a thread, so you can already see results while TreeSize is working without having to wait. The results can be printed in a report. This version is a slimmed down, but fully functional and free version of TreeSize Pro and does not offer the graphical pie charts.

OverDisk is an interactive disk space explorer that displays your hard drive with clickable charts, allowing you to spot files and folders that are the most space consuming, and also get an overall idea of how your disk space is used. It can display charts based on physical size, logical size or wasted space and allows you to quickly browse and explorer a folder with a single click.

HDD Thermometer is a a small temperature monitoring tool for your hard disks. It takes advantage of S.M.A.R.T. technology, which comes with most modern hard drives, to retrieve the hard disk temperature information in Celsius or Fahrenheit. It then displays the current temperature in the system tray and you can configure custom thresholds that cause a warning or an alert. Alert options include system tray message, sound, command line execution, or it can also power off your computer to prevent damage or data loss.

vSubst is a small tool that allows you to creates drive-letters for any folder on your hard disk. For example , you can take folder X and make it look and feel as if it was Drive X. This can be very useful if you need to simulate certain environments or want to create a virtual CD drive. There are certain restrictions, you obviously cannot defrag or format the folder as if it was a real drive, but other than that, Windows thinks it's the "real thing". You can choose to create the drives temporarily or permanently.

Me.Ri.Quota is a small and unique folder size monitor that allows you to specify a list of folders and their maximum sizes. If the program detects that any of the specified folders are over quota, it can perform several actions, including a sound alert, pop-up notification, commandline parameter and more. Me.Ri.Quota can be run completely automated in commandline mode and timer mode, where it starts the check and then exits until the next scheduled run.

SpaceMonger is a tool for keeping track of the free space on your computer. Each file or folder on a given drive is displayed in a box in the main window whose size is a relative comparison to all the other files in your system. The program supports popup info-tips that can display the full filename, the icon, the date, size, and attributes of any file or folder. You can delete files from the right click menu and customize the number of files to be shown as well as the color scheme. (Newer versions of SpaceMonger are available as shareware).

HD Tune is a hard disk benchmarking and information tool. You can use it to measures the raw performance of your drive(s), including transfer rate, burst rate, access time and more. In addition, it provides detailed information about supported hard drive features, as well as current temperature, S.M.A.R.T. Information (if available) and an error scanner.

HDD Health is a full-featured hard disk failure-prediction agent that monitors your drives and provides detailed information about each. It uses S.M.A.R.T technology to estimate the T.E.C for each drive and displays extended information for each. You can set alerts (email, sound, popup network) and be notified when there are any problems.

Disk Bench tests your hard drive speed in a real life situation not in a benchmarking environment. All it does is copies a file from A to B, times the time it took, and deletes the file from B again. Optionally, you can also run a benchmark by creating a file with a user-specified size.

DiskTT (Disk Throughput Tester) measures the performance of your harddrive`s read and write function. You can select a folder or drive to test and the program performs a real-time test on the selected disk.

Drive Manager is a small and useful tool that makes it easy to retrieve drive information for all your drives at a glance. It runs as a standalone EXE file and displays Label, Type, Size, Used, Available, Format, Serial number and Percentage free for each local and removable drive. The information is refreshed every 20 seconds - double-clicking opens the drive in Windows Explorer. Drive Manager also allows you to create a substitute drive letter for a local folder, and to hide drives from Windows Explorer.

LookDisk is multi-functional disk tool, that you can use to search for files using various parameters. You can search for text in any files, find duplicate files (by name or content) and also get an overall view of your disks and space usage. Additional features include several advanced filtering options, use of external viewers, support for compressed archive files (ZIP, ARJ, CAB, RAR, LZH) and more. The list of found files can be saved or printed. LookDisk can handle large amount of files without using lots of system resources.

SC-DiskInfo is an easy to use disk space analyzer that allows you to see which folders take up the most space. It displays details, including number of subdirectories, file count and overall size, as well as a graphical chart display to quickly spot the largest folders. You can sort the report for all columns. Standalone, no install required.

HDClone Free Edition enables you to move the content from an entire ATA/SATA hard drive to another, larger one. The program installs itself on a bootable floppy or CD, and include it`s own operating system, so it runs completely independent from Windows. Once HDClone has created the bootable floppy or CD for you, you can use it to boot your computer and copy the drive content to the new (installed) drive, using a graphical interface. The free version is perfectly suitable to upgrade your existing drive to a larger one. It supports IDE/ATA/SATA hard disks and is able to copy up to 300 MB/min. The latest version now supports USB mouse and keyboard as well as USB 1.1 drives.

Phantom CD enables you to mount a CD or DVD image and access it from a virtual drive, without the need to insert the physical media. If you have plenty of hard drive space to store your disk images, this method can be more convenient and offer faster performance than running the actual CD or DVD. Phantom CD supports ISO and BIN/CUE image formats that can be created with any disk imaging software. You can load disk images from the main interface or, more conveniently, by simply right-clicking on the virtual drive icon that is added to Windows Explorer.

Crystal DiskMark is a simple hard disk benchmarking software that can perform sequential or random read/write tests on a selected drive. You can select the number of read/wrte operations as well as the size of the data sample. The program presents you with easy to read MP/s results for each test. Standalone software, no installation required.

Zero Assumption Disk Space Visualizer enables you to visualize the content of your hard drive, spot large folders and files, and optionally delete them to free disk space.

HD Speed measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your hard disks, cd/dvd-roms and floppy drives. It features a realtime graphical display.

i.Disk counts the size of subdirectories including all their contents, and then lists their size in descending order. The program is simple, yet useful for tracking down where the space is being used on your hard drives. It offers the option to delete selected folders or file (with wildcard support). While there are better disk management tools, I found this one to be particular useful to track down empty folders, left behind from software installations.

Disktective is a disk reporting tool that allows you to visualize your hard disk usage with pie charts, allowing you to quickly spot which directories use up the most space. You can navigate the directory tree and get a pie chart for each selected item, which can also be printed (in full color) or exported to HTML (text based) or proprietary tree format. The program is simple to use and does not require installation - just run the executable.

Emsa Disk Check is a tool for disk checking, full disk reading and benchmarking of your hard disks or CD/DVD drives. It scans the entire contents of a disk and displays statistics, including file and folder count, read speed, total bytes and more. In addition, it reports if any read errors (bad files) are found. Easy to use, standalone utility.

FoldersReport scans a selected drive or a base and displays details for the overall folder size, the number of files contained in each folder, the number of hidden files in each, as well as compressed files. You can sort the results by each column and thereby easily locate empty folders or see which ones use up the most space. Also supports CD-ROM drives, and network resources on a remote computer.

Karen`s Drive Info allows you to learn the hidden `secrets` of your disk and CD-ROM drives. Are your files compressed? How big is each drive? Does the drive support Long File Names (LFN)? Karen`s Drive Info reveals all this and more.

Mousesoft Directory Size is a quick and easy to use tool to get an overview of folder sizes on your computer. You can select the drive or directory and it displays a list of folders and files, sorted by their size and color code by type. The results can be printed, emailed or exported to text, HTML or Excel.