CNET Editors' review
With Windows, it can be hard to see the trees for the forest; it does a pretty good job with the "big picture," but you've got to do some clicking to see the details, which actually makes it harder to get an accurate overview of your system. JAM's TreeSize Free is a nifty bit of freeware that displays the size of every folder and file, including every subfolder, in a series of expandable Explorer-like tree views. You can use TreeSize Free as a standalone app activated from the desktop or start menu, but you can also associate it with the Windows context menu for right-click access.
TreeSize Free's compact interface opened with a blank main view, which we quickly populated by clicking Scan on the menu bar and selecting a drive. TreeSize Free doesn't merely rearrange system information for added convenience (not that there's anything wrong with that) but instead scans your disks and directories, displaying progress via graphs and various icons. Scanning our drive took a few minutes but less time than comparable processes, such as indexing for searching. We clicked Options and selected the check box to show TreeSize Free in context menus. When the program finished its scan, we closed it and then opened Explorer. We browsed to a random folder on our C drive and right-clicked it. TreeSize Free was listed in the context menu. We clicked it, and the program opened with the selected directory displayed. We clicked Expand on the program's menu bar and selected each of the six Levels, each of which opened the successive directory layer in its main view, with file and folder sizes displayed as figures and bar graphs. It was easy to switch between levels as well as views for size, percent, allocated space, file count, compression rate, sorting, and more. Pausing the cursor over any item in the view called up a detailed view of the item's attributes, a helpful touch.
TreeSize Free is the sort of freeware we like a lot, something that adds a really useful feature that's unobtrusive when you don't need it and a right-click away when you do. It's great for getting an accurate view of just where all the trees are in your forest.
Publisher's Description
From JAM Software:
Every hard disk is too small if you just wait long enough. TreeSize Free tells you where precious space has gone to. TreeSize Free can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders. You can expand this folder in Explorer-like style and you will see the size of every subfolder. All results can also be drilled down to the file level. Scanning is done in a thread, so you can already see results while TreeSize Free is working. The Explorer context menu is supported within TreeSize, as well as the usual drag & drop operations. The disk space tool now also includes the main feature of our discontinued freeware NTFSRatio: TreeSize Free can display the NTFS compression rate.
What's new in this version: Version 2.5.1 increased speed when expanding many folders and files. The progress of a scan is now shown in the Windows 7 taskbar. Now able to show the NTFS compression rate in the directory tree (NTFSRatio deceased). Added new option allows to show compressed folders in blue, partially compressed in dark blue.
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All versions:
4.4 starsout of 97 votes
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Current version:
4.7 starsout of 27 votes
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My rating:
Write review
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"It's free and does what it promises so 5 stars!"
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
Simple means of getting the info you need to know where to look for a real cleanup of an old computer
Cons
not entirely obvious that you should go straight to 'Scan'
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"Very useful"
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
- easy to use
- relatively quickCons
none really
Summary
My favorite tool now for finding large wasteful files. It'd be nice if they could integrate duplicate file detection as well.
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"Works really well. Very useful."
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
Nice tool - indispensable.
Cons
I have found no cons.
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"Great little program - A must for disk cleanup"
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
Does just what is supposed to and it does fast and straight to the point.
Free.Cons
None so far. The first measurement takes a little while, but hey it's no big deal; once it has been made, it's very fast refreshing (F5) the directory sizes.
Summary
When I realized my data partition was over 60GB, I thought "I wish I could see directory sizes just like file sizes in Explorer". I asked Saint Google (yes, Microsoft, shame on you for not having this feature) and found my way to this little gem. Finding big-sized directories was such a breeze that I ended cleaning up my whole data and brought it down to under 10GB.
Quick start: Go to the Scan menu. -
"Just what I needed to find the problem."
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
Very easy to use.
Free
Does what it says it will.
Scan a whole drive or just a folder.Cons
Doesn't have a repair function that I could find. (Minor. There are plenty of apps out there to do the repair once you can find out the problem.)
Summary
Used this to find out why I was getting a low disk space warning. Found that a hidden folder contained 50 Gb of temporary internet files. MS disk cleanup wouldn't touch this folder when I ran it. TreeSize showed me where the files were hidden and I used another free app to remove them. So happy to have that half of my hard drive back. Yeah, it's an older computer with just 102 Gb of available space, so that 50 was important.
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"Very useful directory level tool"
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
Gices folder and drive sizing at a click
Cons
Should still have all the file operations as well
Summary
The essential Windows add on - should have been part ow Windows from the start
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"clear, easy, stable"
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
Does job that I exactly expected.
Cons
Nothing yo say cons.
Summary
I recomend this application.
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"it does what is claims and for free"
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
useful to find and clean drive structure
Cons
just a tad slow on initial scan
Summary
I am the worlds worse at forgetting what I name a file or folder so If you let your drives get messy like me, this WILL aid in locating and cleaning the structure. it is simple and does a simple but useful task and best of all it does what it does for free. If you want a Cadillac don't go shopping in the thrift store.
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"love it. a must have tool!"
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
love it. a must have tool!
Cons
freebie doesn't work on network drives.
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"A bit slow, but an essential utility."
Version: TreeSize Free 2.5.1
Pros
The ability to find out the space taken by every branch and sub-branch of the folder tree on a drive is essential, and this is infinitely faster than examining every folder and subfolder individually with "properties" in the Windows File Explorer.
Cons
It's a bit slow, and it's not obvious when it's still working on specific directories, so you might think a particular branch doesn't have much in it, then you look at Treesize again two minutes later and there's 30GB showing in that branch!
Summary
This is one of those essential features that Microsoft should have built into Windows 20 years ago but never did. (I think DOS had a way to do it.) I use TreeSize just to figure out where my disk space is going, to figure out if a specific set of subfolders will fit on a CD or DVD or flash-drive, and to help me prioritize where I need to get rid of excess files f space becomes an issue. (That's rare on most hard drives these days, but still an issue on flash drives and on the toy 80 GB hard drives the government puts in its office computers.)
It's also allowed me a couple of times to spot when log files have started growing like kudzu without my realizing it, so I can delete or disable them.
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