ShowSize Disk Space Analyzer

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on August 23, 2010

If your PC only has one hard disk, the file management tools built into Windows are probably sufficient, but if you manage multiple disks on one or more machines, you need something stronger. AvniTech Solutions' ShowSize Disk Space Analyzer is a specialized disk and file management tool that can quickly study a disk drive and display detailed information about its partitions, folders, and file contents, including advanced sorting and reporting capabilities that go beyond Windows.

ShowSize opens with an attractive, cleanly configured interface and a scan-initiating dialog that includes a selectable Helpful Hint. This tool tip is welcome and helps quickly familiarize users with the program; however, its apparently nonselectable "always-on-top" appearance might annoy multitaskers. It's easily defeated, though, by controls on the interface as well as the file menu. This menu and some familiar icons constitute ShowSize's control suite, with a left-hand folder explorer and a main display rounding out the layout. ShowSize makes frequent use of pop-up notifications to warn users of any changes to files, folders, or drives; we like this feature since it offers an attention-grabbing notification and clearly explains the matter. Among this program's thoughtful extras is a dialog button to copy these messages to the clipboard. ShowSize offers seven tabbed, printable report selections with draggable partitions: Folder Sizes, Only Files, File Types, Folders and Files, Active Folders, and Only Folders. A toolbar on the main display lets you choose between various filters, views, and column options; optional graphs show folder or file size. Nothing about ShowSize seems difficult, but there's plenty of assistance, even a blog accessible from the Help menu.

As disk drives get bigger and multidrive systems become more common, users need more and better information about what's stored on them. Windows does a pretty good job, but if you need more, ShowSize has you covered.

Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of ShowSize Disk Space Analyzer 5.1.5. The trial version is limited to 30 days.

Publisher's Description

From AvniTech Solutions:

Manage disk space on huge drives and network volumes easily. Find biggest folders and files taking up your disk space. Get seven useful disk reports like Folder Sizes, File Types, Only Files, Only Folders, etc. Print contents of folders easily. ShowSize gives you a clear picture of disk space usage on your drives. As a result you can find out what folders, file types and files are consuming the most disk space. You can also find some interesting things. For example, do you want to know what is the largest file on a paticular drive? You can do that with Only Files report by sorting it on the file size. You can't do that with Windows Explorer because it doesn't have any report like that where all the files are listed in a straight, sortable list.

What's new in this version: