WizTree is famously almost 50x faster than WinDirStat (on normal Windows NTFS drives) by reading the Master File Table (MFT) instead of walking the tree to measure each file.<p>WizTree isn't open-source like WinDirStat but "free as in beer" with optional donations.<p>There's also a fork of WinDirStat patched to read the MFT but I don't know anyone who's tried it: <a href="https://github.com/ariccio/altWinDirStat">https://github.com/ariccio/altWinDirStat</a>
They are getting very close to releasing windirstat-next [0] and already have some betas out, you can learn more about it in the subreddit. [1]<p>>WinDirStat fans,<p>>As a new pet project, I recently started some substantial revisions to WinDirStat in my GitHub branch and will work with current maintainer (Oliver Schneider) to eventually publish a new release hopefully in the next few months. The current changes on deck speed up performance drastically (seconds compared to minutes in some cases). It uses less memory compared to recent alternatives (WizTree), is faster as scanning network paths, and obviously isn't pushy about donating (although I certainly would not discourage folks from donating to their favorite opensource projects).<p>>Oliver recently opened up the GitHub Issues trackers, and I would love to hear suggestions or known bugs for the existing version:<p>>For the nerds interested in the changes I have queued up, you can visit the GitHub page<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/windirstat/windirstat-next">https://github.com/windirstat/windirstat-next</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/WinDirStat/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/WinDirStat/</a>
I like "ncdu", a TUI equivalent for Unixy systems.<p>Although I learned the hard way that if you run it on a Mac home folder, and have iCloud's "optimize Mac storage" turned on, macOS will suddenly try to download literally everything in your iCloud storage to try to count the size of it, probably filling your disk. Oops.
I find Space Sniffer <a href="http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/" rel="nofollow">http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/</a> to be a much better visualisation. It updates in near real-time. If you have lots of copy/move ops going in background, you will see those dirs blinking rectangles growing/shirking in Space Sniffer.<p>To me, this is a clone of (now dead) Space Monger <a href="https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=150" rel="nofollow">https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=150</a>
Not open source (freeware), but much faster than WinDirStat for NTFS - WizTree <a href="https://diskanalyzer.com/" rel="nofollow">https://diskanalyzer.com/</a>. In short - it scans the actual filesystem metadata directly instead of enumerating files through the OS APIs, which makes it extremely fast.
For Linux there's QDirStat: <a href="https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat">https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat</a>
I have used WinDirStat for years. It's not perfect, but it solves my use case very well.<p>My use case is just: my disk is full, I don't know why. This happens on one of my computers like once a year, so the fact that it's slow is fine. It usually helps me spot some folder set that is taking up a lot of space that I don't need on that PC, or something large that is duplicated.<p>My personal favorite example is wedding photos and videos. Turns out: those are huge, I am not going to delete them, but they don't need to be backed up on every computer I own.
Treemaps are generally a really cool way to visualise hierarchical data. See also the Observatory of Economic Complexity, which has treemaps of international trade and economic statistics.<p><a href="https://oec.world/profile/country/gbr#yearly-trade" rel="nofollow">https://oec.world/profile/country/gbr#yearly-trade</a>
There are quite many apps for visualizing disk folder structure for almost any OS. Any flavor you like: lists (diskwave, omnidisk), treemaps (GrandPerspective), pie charts (DiskSavvy), sunburst (baobab), icicle, etc.<p>The two winning visualization types are sunburst and treemaps.
Both have their own cons and pros, but in our tests user sunburst performed slightly better for regular users.
My personal bet is that no disk space analyzing tool's developer took it seriously or tried to actually advance the algorithms. Most of the apps I know use quite straightforward implementation and haven't been touched for years. Guess a little bit of filtering, grouping and changing coloring algorithms could significantly improve the treemap's perception, but someone has to do the job.<p>disclaimer: I'm the original designer of DaisyDisk.
For anyone who wants to find more information regarding treemaps, which are used in this application, this link <a href="https://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/</a> has some history about treemaps and here <a href="https://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap/demos/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap/demos/</a> you can find a Java implementation where you can play
<a href="https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free" rel="nofollow">https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free</a> has been my companion for years, fast and clean
Another oss alternative that a like is SpaceSniffer[1]. It doesn't have the color coding but it is much faster and updates live.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/" rel="nofollow">http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/</a>
It still tickles me that many Linux distros come with a tool like this preinstalled (<a href="https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/DiskUsageAnalyzer" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/DiskUsageAnalyzer</a>). Ah, the good ol' Windows days of having to hunt down tools that were actually useful. Far in the rearview mirror for me.
Note: There’s a gotcha when using it in multi-user environments (like a server).<p>Users with Administrator access do not have permission to enumerate directories / files inside other Admin users home directories. So any per-user files are not counted in this scenario.<p>Source: ‘The mysterious case of the Windows server with a full disk but WinDirStat shows it as only half-full’ :-)
I use WinDirStat. At one point a number of years ago, I became curious about the parent program KDirStat. So I actually got that installed on some Ubuntu or something. It was interesting. Like a prototype for WinDirStat or something.
I recently observed, much to my delight, that WinDirStat runs flawlessly on Android under Winlator (<a href="https://www.winlator.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.winlator.org/</a>).
Many good alternative listed already.<p>But I have quite liked FileLight which is cross platform <a href="https://apps.kde.org/filelight/" rel="nofollow">https://apps.kde.org/filelight/</a><p>Likely not as fast as WizTree though.<p>Edit 1: source at <a href="https://invent.kde.org/utilities/filelight" rel="nofollow">https://invent.kde.org/utilities/filelight</a> with GPL 2.0 licence
For my MacOS friends, it might be a little outdated but I prefer GrandPerspective: <a href="https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow">https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/</a>
Haven't tried it in years. Have they ever fixed it not accurately accounting for directory junctions and links?<p>Edit: it seems they have! But I don't know about NTFS compression and alternate data streams.
It's a longtime friend of mine who has kept my computer from wasting space.
But it's pretty outdated, and I think there are better programs out there now.
I tried many other so called "successors" to WinDirStat. I didn't like a single one of them, each of them had some significant problem.<p>This is a case of "If it ain't broken, don't fix it". This executable is from 2005 and still works flawlessly.<p>If you haven't tried it yet, I encourage you to!
I like Diskitude by Evan Wallace the most for this kind of quick and easy drive content sizes inspection.
It does full scan, but is pretty fast and easy to use. And is super tiny.<p><a href="https://madebyevan.com/diskitude/" rel="nofollow">https://madebyevan.com/diskitude/</a>
Other Linux implementations:<p>- <a href="https://github.com/bootandy/dust">https://github.com/bootandy/dust</a> (command line, extremely fast)
- mate-disk-usage-analyzer (gui/gtk, a bit more intuitive and allows operating on files too).
I love WinDirStat and was pleasantly surprised to learn there is also a Linux variant that is really good. <a href="https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat">https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat</a>
I'm a fan of WinDirStat. Yes it can be slow, but it runs on darn near every Win OS, hasn't changed in years, is a small executable, and the site always seems available. I used it many times to solve disk space issues on the job.
It's likely the product is now abandoned-ware or no longer developed. I'm sure this is the same version (or just a point different) that I had on my PC about a decade or so go. That said, that version worked OK.
From the download page:<p><i>It is known to run on Windows 95 (IE5), Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows NT4 (SP5), Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.</i><p>...it is also known to run on Windows 10 and 11, and likely any newer versions too. IMHO this is a great example of how software should be. One tiny binary that is very widely compatible, doesn't have any user-hostile "features", and remains stable and bug-free. It's a contrast from an industry that largely can't produce such achievements, is becoming increasingly hostile, and quite telling when there are already comments here complaining about its age.