This tutorial will help you use an application to make a graphical “roadmap” of the files on your hard drive. It will allow you to see what takes up the most of the space and where they are on the drive. It is a free application and can be found on Sourceforge’s website. The programs name is WinDirStat, and it can be downloaded from the link provided. (The link will automatically start the download once the page loads)
You will see the above window (or something slightly different, depending on your browser) whichever browser you are using, save the file to your hard drive. Usually, I put these files on the desktop until I am done installing them.
You should now see the above icon on your desktop (or wherever you saved the file from the download). Double-click on it to begin the installation wizard.
This is the first window of the installation. It contains the License Agreement. Once you have read through it, click on Next to continue.
The next window of the installer allows you to select what features will be installed. The CORE (default and locked) is the main program files. Depending on your OS one of the other two (ANSI or Unicode) will be checked as well. Leave them alone. The other options are all optional. I have chosen to create a program group in the Start Menu as well as create a shortcut on the desktop to my application.
The next window in the installer allows you to select where to put all of the applications files. If you do not know what to put here, leave it default.
This bar will move and text will go on the screen while the installation takes place. Once it stops working you can click on next to continue.
This final window of the installation wizard asks if you would like to launch the application now. Go ahead and make sure the box is checked to begin the application.
This window allows you to select what you would like to include in the scan. Feel free to select everything on your computer to view all of your files.
This window will appear while we wait for the application to do its thing. Depending on the amount of hard drives, size of hard drives, and the speed of your computer, this may take several minutes, please be patient.
This is the final output. The upper left section allows you to select the drive in which you would like to see. As you change drives and/or folders the graphs on the bottom of the screen will highlight the “bubbles” that represent that amount of data. You can also use the column to the right to select all files of a specific type and see where they are located at on the drive and how much space they take up. This concludes this tutorial. Feel free to roam around with this application as a lot of its features are neat and allow for a ton of information. I hope this was easy to follow and thanks for reading.
