How can I see at a glance the size of the contents of a folder?

[Autumn]

My C drive is 74.5 Gb with 17.6Gb free

My D drive is 68.6 with 2.7Gb free

I have an L Drive (external hard drive) which is 232Gb with 154 Gb free, but I use this as a back up drive.

I thought I would move some folders from D drive to C drive.

Is there any way that I can display the size of a folder without hovering over it with the mouse or going into properties?

There used to be a program, but I have forgotten its name.

I would like to see at a glance all the folders displaying their sizes in order that I may make a decision upon which folders to move.

I don't want to have to physically write down the contents of each folder.

Hope you can help me with this decision.

Also you may be able to suggest the best way to organise my data.

Do I need another external hard drive?

http://www.aldi-stores.co.uk/special_buys/index.html

It is the third item along. My current external hard drive was from Aldi as was my computer 3 1/2 years ago. http://www.emofaces.com/en/emoticons...d-emoticon.gif

[StuartR]

Re: How can I see at a glance the size of the contents of a folder?

There are several utilities out there that you might like to try, some free, some "donationware" and no doubt some freeware. Here's a few found with a quick "google":

http://shareme.com/details/quick-view-folder-size.html

http://www.explorerxp.com/

http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/

I can't vouch for any of these though as I've not used them. I used to use a utility, probably back in the 98SE days but I can't remember what it was called. I normally just mouse-over in explorer or right-click & properties.

I can't recommend the best way to organise your data because I'm still looking for it myself . I tend to keep everything in dated folders in "my pictures" and archive that to an external drive & rename it when it gets to 50GB or so. I also retain the original file names so it can be a pain finding images if you can't recall at least the rough date they were taken.

I've used Adobe PhotoShop Album but found it lost track of the indexing if you moved files to another folder - a real pain because, in my case, it took hours to catalogue everything and then it was all gone in a second . That was version 2 and I guess it may have been improved since then. I'll be interested to learn what software others use for indexing / cataloguing.

The one thing I do religiously is back-up. I keep duplicates of everything on a variety of USB drives and NAS (network attached storage) or SAN (storage area network) devices, the latter 2 hidden away in the house in case of burglary (extreme? not when you've been burgled I assure you!). The one thing I don't do though, and I know I should, is keep an additional copy of all backed-up data off-site - must get round to that soon.

[Autumn]

Re: How can I see at a glance the size of the contents of a folder?

Thanks very much Stuart for your reply. I downloaded explorer xp. It was only a small file, but it did the business.

All my folders showed the sizes and I made the decision to move 2 of them on to my C drive.

I now have 16 Gb free on my D drive and 4 Gb free on my C drive.

I store my pics on my D drive, so it will give me a little more time to prune some pics and make further decisions.

[StuartR]

Re: How can I see at a glance the size of the contents of a folder?

Good, glad it worked for you.

Something else worth looking at, especially if you're moving large volumes of data about, is defragging (defragmenting) your drives regularly as it can make a significant difference to the overall performance of your PC. The only downside to defragging is that it takes a fair time to run on large disk drives- you also need circa 15% of free space on the selected drive to run the task.

Of course, you might already do this

[StuartR]

Re: How can I see at a glance the size of the contents of a folder?

Good, glad it worked for you.

Something else worth looking at, especially if you're moving large volumes of data about, is defragging (defragmenting) your drives regularly as it can make a significant difference to the overall performance of your PC. The only downside to defragging is that it takes a fair time to run on large disk drives- you also need circa 15% of free space on the selected drive to run the task.

I defragged a colleagues work laptop only yesterday (he was down to circa 3% spare disk space and the defragmentation preview window was about 70% red ). I moved a lot of old crud off the disk, archived his mail and about a million spreadsheets from 2003 or earlier! and by the time we'd finnished he thought he'd got a new laptop.

Of course, you might already do this

[StuartR]

Re: How can I see at a glance the size of the contents of a folder?

Oh well, you got both versions of my reply - not sure how I did that ...and since when has "finished" had two n's....

5/10 must try harder

[Autumn]

Re: How can I see at a glance the size of the contents of a folder?

That was a very interesting post Stuart. I do defrag frequently. I check first and often it says it is not necessary. I was very surprised last time that I did it, neither my C nor my D drive required defragging, so I thought I'd check the L drive (external hard drive) and it required doing.(For some reason I had never thought to check before, as it is fairly new and I have a lot of room on it )

Also, I did not know I needed 15% free to defrag. I am sure I did not have that. Would it use other drives with more room to move the stuff around during defragmentation?

What interested me in your mail, is that you archived some stuff. I have never done that and don't know how to do it. Perhaps you could tell me if you archive photographs and if you do, can they be restored at a later date? Also I should like to know how to do it please.

I look forward to your comments.

[paul.r.w]

Re: How can I see at a glance the size of the contents of a folder?

Always backup before you defrag...it can go wrong!