Quickly Find what Files are Using your Disk Space with Disk Savvy

One of the most important skills to master when it comes to using a computer running Microsoft Windows is learning how to properly manage your files and folders. But sometimes it may be difficult to find what files are using all your disk space. When this happens, it may be necessary to use a third party application to help you out. In this article, we will be showing you how to quickly find what files are using your disk space with Disk Savvy.

Disk Savvy is a free hard drive analyzer tool similar to WinDirStat that will scan your entire computer, a single hard drive, or a folder and its subfolders to show you what files are taking up how much space. You can download Disk Savvy from their website here.

Once you run Disk Savvy, you will see the main interface for the software as seen in the image below.

To start a disk scan, click the Analyze button at the upper left and choose what drive or folder you want to scan.

For our example, we will scan the entire C drive to get an idea of what files are using how much disk space. Once the scan is complete, we will see a listing of the folders on the C drive sorted by how much disk space each one is using. We can then open a specific folder to see what files and folders within that folder are using how much space. Then we can continue to drill down into the subfolders as needed to find the information we are looking for.

At the lower left we see information about the number of files and folders scanned. You can click the down arrow at the upper right of the pane to filter the information shown and even run a real time disk monitor.

At the bottom of the screen, we have the categorize by extension option selected by default. This shows us how many of what types of files were found in the scan and how much space they are using. You can click the dropdown to choose another categorization option.

For example, if we change the category to categorize by file type, it will show us a listing of various file types with their quantity, size and percentage of the total space used on the C drive. If you were scanning just a specific folder, then the total space used would be for that folder and not the entire drive.

Now we will navigate to the Documents folder for this user to see which files are using the most disk space. We can still apply the same category filters when viewing a specific folder.

The Wizard tool is used to display disk space usage based on specific types of files as seen in the image below.

The Slides feature is used to display graphical charts for a variety of usage scenarios. You can have it create charts for all the categories or just the ones you select. Once you choose your options, click on the Show button to have the charts created.

Then you will be able to toggle through the charts to view them. You can also save the charts in various formats such as PDF, CSV, Excel, text and so on.

Disk Savvy also as a built in search feature that you can use not only to find files but also to see how much disk space they are using.

If you click on the Charts button, you will see similar charts as you did from the Slides option. You will have some additional saving options as well as the ability to view the chart as a bar chart rather than a pie chart. You can also print the chart from here if needed.

The Top Files button can be used to show you the largest files based on certain criteria such as images, documents, videos, created date, modified date and accessed time.

The Reports option will show you reports based on your recent scans. This section cant be used and is available with the Pro version of Disk Savvy.

As you can see, Disk Savvy is an effective tool that can be used to quickly find what files are using your disk space.

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