Blog: ShowSize, Articles and tips

Scans for folder sizes take time. It depends on how big the folder is in terms of number of folders and files deep within it. If you start scanning a big disk to add up the file and folder sizes, it may contain hundreds of thousands of folders and millions of files. You don’t want to sit there waiting for a full disk scan when all you are interested in is a specific folder and its subfolders. Neither do you want to use the mighty Task Manager to stop a wrong scan started by mistake on a big folder. Beware of disk utilities that don’t give you any way to cancel a scan. Such utilities appear to hang because they often don’t display how the scan is progressing. It takes quite an effort to build such features that give useful feedback. No wonder, you often reach for the Task Manager to stop such programs.

ShowSize is smart software. You can precisely go to scan the folder that you are really interested in. And, if by mistake, you start a scan on a big folder and then change your mind, you don’t have to grit your teeth and sit through till it completes. You can simply cancel it by clicking on a Cancel button.

There are many other time saving features. You can have different copies of ShowSize running on different folders. The new ShowSize 5 (in Beta) has a special feature for 5-licenses-or-more that allows to save a scan result and then later examine it on any computer (even one that is not connected to that location). Get the smart software that is designed and optimized for convenience. Just scan a big folder with ShowSize and then do the scan with any of other such utilities. You will know the difference. Talk to one of our customers and they will tell you why they prefer to use ShowSize.

Read more about better software design of ShowSize in other articles under Why Use ShowSize?.

ShowSize has been designed carefully for optimized performance. It is important to understand the following concepts when you use such a program that can produce huge reports:

Great capacity for huge listings and their printout:

ShowSize uses virtual list technology to accommodate even millions of items in the reports without using too much memory.

Most of the operations are cancelable: Such large capacity is useless without an ability to cancel at any time. We have taken extra pains to ensure that almost all the time consuming operations can be canceled in ShowSize. This is for your convenience so that you don’t get locked up in a long operation if you decide to change your mind after starting a scan or report.

Disk scan data is cached

ShowSize remembers the files list and attributes in a special cache and reuses it till you move to a folder outside the scanned data or till you specifically refresh it. Hence, when drilling down into the reports, you will see that the reports are filled up fast! This is especially noticeable when using large drives or slow network locations. Moreover, ShowSize uses a disk based cache so that it can now display even millions of items in the lists.

Superior design, higher speed

ShowSize has been designed with considerations for speed. Many disk utilities list all the drives and their folders in the left pane. While this might be more convenient, it is certainly slower, specially on systems with large numbers of drives and folders. ShowSize has been designed to show only a single drive’s contents in the left folder. For network locations, it even saves more time by making the network location the root of the left pane. Moreover, even that can be switched off for slower network drives. Please see Tips on working with slow network drives.

Best of all, you can start more copies of ShowSize each working on a different drive or main folder.

No memory leaks

ShowSize has been thoroughly tested for memory leaks. When you go for a file system utility, you should test it thoroughly to see if it has memory leaks. A good test for such programs would be to run them for a while and repeatedly scan big drives. If you have a resource monitoring program turned on, you should see your system running out of resources gradually. Finally, you might see that many other programs have stopped working and a Windows message appears, “You are dangerously low on resources.” Beware of such programs which have memory leaks.

We appreciate all the feedback! More and more network administrators are finding ShowSize useful, mainly because of its speed and flexibility. There are many who are using the command line options for batch operations. Many users have given suggestions to improve the product. We are happy that we have been able to accommodate most of these suggestions. ShowSize will continue to get better and better because we give more importance to the feedback of the actual users rather than making cosmetic changes to the product. We hope you see the point and spread the word. Thank you for all the support!

Read more about better software design of ShowSize in other articles under Why Use ShowSize?.

Good question. The reason you came to see ShowSize indicates that for some reason, you are not satisfied with this other utility. Here are some distinct advantages of ShowSize:

Designed for optimized performance:

• Great capacity for huge listings and their printout
• Most of the operations are cancelable
• Disk scan data is cached
• Superior design, higher speed
• No memory leaks

Please read all about it in a separate topic ShowSize is fast!

Software focused on size reports: Don’t settle for a do-all file manager utility that can’t do full justice to the task of reporting the folder sizes in all the different formats that we support. If you think a little, you’ll get the idea. It’s plain common sense. It is the difference between going to a general consultant and to a specialist.

If you are serious about knowing your disk space better, go for the specialist. Use software that is dedicated to reporting the folder sizes. See what difference a “focused” utility like ShowSize makes. And, if you continue using it, please buy the licensed version to support our efforts.

Bonus utility features and reports other than Folder Sizes: 

Read more about better software design of ShowSize in other articles under Why Use ShowSize?.

But, you can’t compare sizes of different folders using Windows Explorer because it doesn’t list all the folder sizes in a single report.

It would be a painful process to see the properties for each folder, then write down the folder sizes on paper and compare them.

ShowSize gives you convenient reports listing the sizes of all the folders. Moreover, you can sort this report in a different order, for instance, by increasing or decreasing folder sizes.

Read more about better software design of ShowSize in other articles under Why Use ShowSize?.