SpaceSniffer
Excellent
Full user review
-
"This thing really is a space sniffer! Excellent!"
Pros
-Easy to use graphical interface. Back, home, and file up buttons make navigation easy.
-Provides information in the rectangles (file size, name, etc.).
-Easy to delete files in the application with a right click so you don't have to go and hunt it down in Windows Explorer.Cons
-A little overwhelming at the beginning, and takes some getting used to but that is only initially since once you get used to it it's very easy to use and intuitive.
-Log menu keeps poppong up and had to be disabled.Summary
I was going crazy because I knew there had to be some junk files on my hard drive taking up space. I have a very minimal system with few media files and mostly small programs installed. I knew I had a handfull of large programs that were several Gigabytes but not nearly enough to take up my 80GB hard drive. After cleaning junk files and using every other trick in the book I knew I needed to find just what files were driving me crazy. I tried a couple of other space utilities and while they found large files they didn't help me get to the bottom of my issue.
Then I found this little gem! Someone recommended SpaceSniffer on a blog and so I downloaded it. Initially it was just as overwhelming as other utilities but once I got used to the interface it was very intuitive! I just had to double click to bring up the file to find out what smaller files it contained and see just what was taking up space. The boxes are clearly labeled and the space that they take up. Within a few minutes I had found several offenders, large files I thought were deleted but I had missed, and a quick right click lets you delete it right from the program. I didn't have to go hunting later in Windows Explorer, it was right there and I deleted it right there. I easily cleaned up 15GB of junk files, and that was just at a glance! Imagine what I can free up with a good hour when I have the chance to get some serious maintanence in!
The menu buttons at the top are useful as well and make navigation up one file or home to the whole disk was easy.
My only complaint was that the log menu kept popping up every time it found a file it couldn't analyze, which was annoying since I couldn't minimize it and I couldn't have another window in use while the log was up. I was able to disable it in the settings in one of the menus though so it wasn't too horrible. And if you want the log later you can always find it in the menu at the top again.
This application is free and it works great so I have nothing really bad to say about it, once I got the log out of my way it worked like I wanted it to. I would highly recommend to anyone who needs to manage their hard drive space or anyone just looking to keep their files better organized. A must have utility!