How To Download, Install, Use Windirstat To List Disk Usage Statistics, For Files, Directories On Windows?

Windirstat is a tool used to list, print disk, file, and folder size and related statistics on Windows operating systems. Actually, Windirstat is a clone of the Kdirstat which is developed for Linux distributions for KDE desktop environment where the K came from. The latest version of the WinDirStat is 1.1.2.80 which is released January 28, 2019. Windirstat can also clean up different types of files and directories easily.

As stated Windirstat is the alternative for the KDirStat or QDirStat in Linux, Disk Inventory or GrandPerspective in MacOSX.

Features

We will examine the features of WinDirStat in detail below but here is a shortlist for the features of the WinDirStat.

• Support for most of the operating systems like Linux, Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Fedora, Windows, MacOS
• Coloring of the file types and extensions
• Graphics to show file sizes
• Listing file and folders with their sizes with tree scheme
• Providing information like usage percentage, size, file, and attributes

Download WinDirStat

WinDirStat can be downloaded from the main site and also mirrors like FossHub, SourceForge, and Triple. Below you can select one of the links to download WinDirStat. For this case, we will select Latest installer which is version 1.1.2.

https://windirstat.net/wds_current_setup.exe

https://www.fosshub.com/WinDirStat.html

https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/windirstat/windirstat1_1_2_setup.exe

https://windirstat.mirror.wearetriple.com//wds_current_setup.exe

Install WinDirStat

We will use regular Next and Next install steps. When we click the setup file we will see following screen first.

In the second screen, we will see the following screen where some installation options are provided. We can set or unset to create a desktop shortcut, languages etc.

In this step, we will specify the installation destination folder which is C:\Program Files\WinDirStat .

Following screen the final step of the WinDirStat installation where we can run it by checking Run WinDirStat checkbox.

Scanning Drive and Folders

In order to print some information about the drive, directory, and files we need to scan specified drives, directories and files. We can scan for 3 different type which is

• All Local Drives where all currently connected drives will be scanned.
• Individual Drives will scan only specified drives or partitions like C: or D:  etc.
• A Folder will scan the only specified folder.

File and Director Scan Results

When the scan is completed we will see a screen like below. There is 3 pane where directory list, file extensions and graphics are displayed. In this first pane following information is provided.

• Name of the directory
• Subtree Percentage is the total size of the specified directory
• Percentage is the percentage of the specified directory according to its size to the partition
• Size is the size of the given file or directory
• Items is the total count of the files and directories which resides given directory
• Subdirs is the total count of the only sub-directories
• Last Chance is the last chance of the given file or directory

In the second pane following information about file extension or types and size is provided.

• Extension is the extension of the given files like .dll, .exe etc
• Color is the color of the given file type or extension
• Description is the extended name of the description of the given file type or extension
• Bytes is the total size of the given extension or type of all files

The last pane which resides in the bottom of the two panes will provide a graphical representation of all file and directory types. The colors used to represent different files and file extensions or types.

As an example, we can see that Windows directory is the biggest directory where its size is 7.7 GB in this example and contains 55,479 items where 46,421 of them are files and 9,058 of them are subdirectories.

Delete File or Directory

During the file and directory size inspection, we can find some unneeded files in order to delete or remove. We can delete these files and directories from the WinDirStat directly. There are 3 ways to delete a file or directory. First, we can right-click to the file or directory we want to delete which will open a menu which contains two Delete option.

• Delete (to Recycle Bin) will delete given file or directory and send to the Recycle Bin
• Delete (no way to undelete) will as its explanation suggest where files and directories will be deleted where there will be no undelete option.

We can also use keyboard shortcuts

• Del will delete and send it to the recycle bin.
• Shift+Del will delete directly.

We can also use the toolbar where there are two icons like below.

WinDirStat Alternatives In Windows

Even WinDirStat provides greate features there are some alternative which are very usefull like WinDirStat too. Below we will list some alternatives which provides similar functions to the WinDirStat.

SpaceSniffer provides similar functions to the WinDirStat where big difference is SpaceSniffer does not contains directory list. But SpaceSniffer provides more useful GUI than the WinDirStat.

TreeSize is another alternative to WinDirStat. TreeSize provides simpler user interface and usage. It provides most of the WinDirStat features but doesn’t have extension. TreeSize has modern looking ribbon-style interface which makes it more stylish on the Windows 10. TreeSize has 3 versions where TreeSize Free comes without a cost and TreeSize Personal and TreeSize Professional provides more features for a cost.