7 remarkable features that you may not find in other software

1Huge Capacity and the ability to Stop a scan: Modern disk drives are huge. Finding folder sizes takes time as the software has to perform a deep scan. It is important that you should be able to cancel a long running scan in case you change your mind.

2Save a Directory Listing: Save a directory listing to a file and later view it on any system. Easy to send and share with other admin users.

3Exclude standard, big folders: Save your time by excluding standard big folders that you shouldn't clean up or that you don't want to analyze. For example, "C:\Windows."

4Use a Flat List or Tree List as appropriate: ShowSize presents information in both Tree and Flat lists. A flat list might be more useful in certain cases. For example, how do you find the largest file on a disk? Use the flat list "Only Files" and sort on size so that the largest files come on top. You can not perform such analysis in a Tree List where the largest file might be deep inside a folder and a sort will not bring it to the top.

5Use advanced filters: Apply advanced filters to find the information that you need. For example, show files greater than a certain size and modified between two given dates.

6Display only significant items in charts: A Top Items Chart that shows only the most significant items to give you an uncluttered view of the largest items whether they are folders, file types, files or file owners.

7Skip Deduplicated Folders: These are also known as Symbolic Links or Reparse Points. ShowSize has a setting to ignore Symbolic links which is same as ignoring Deduplicated folders. This gives you a more accurate disk space analysis as the deduplicated data is not scanned again.

Now, see the most important list in ShowSize, Folder Sizes List. Click here to go to next card.

The Folder Sizes list in ShowSize helps you find large, disk space consuming folders quickly. These folders appear at the top in the list.

The accompanying screenshot shows a folder where I store large VM images. The Folder Sizes list is shown magnified for readability.

• As you can see, the "DESKTOP-.." folder is taking up considerable disk space. It contains a Windows 10 VM.
• I expanded this folder further to see the space taken by subfolders.
• This way, I can go on drilling down to get more information.

Click here to see the next slide that explains the "Exclude Folders" feature in ShowSize.

In this screenshot, I "excluded" common Windows folders to speed up the scanning operation that finds folder sizes on the whole drive.

• The excluded folders are shown as "striked out" in the left pane of ShowSize.
• Modern disk drives are huge and you should always use this feature in ShowSize to save your time.
• Excluding such folders also saves you from trouble because you are not supposed to directly delete stuff from Windows' own folders.

Let's drill down the earlier Folder Sizes list to get more information. Click here to proceed.

Coming back to the earlier Folder Sizes list, let's drill down further for more information.

I clicked on the largest folder within Users to expand it further.

• As you can see, AppData internal folder is the one taking up most disk space.
• Why does it appear in "red?" Because it's a system folder that you are not supposed to edit directly.
• I'm not editing it but merely examining it to see what takes up the most disk space.
• I can continue this drill down to any level.

The point is that even though you should not directly delete stuff from such system folders, by drilling down, you can get enough clues on what is taking up the disk space.

Let's see what operations ShowSize supports on such a list. Click here to proceed.

Now let's see what operations you can perform on the Folder Sizes list?

• The screenshot shows the right-click menu where you get to perform many useful actions on one or more selected items.
• For example, "Explorer Operation" shows you exactly the same menu that you see in Windows File Manager's right-click menu.
• Other useful operations are self-explanatory.
• "Delete files" lets you conveniently delete selected items.
• By using the toolbar buttons above, you can choose what columns to show, expand the tree to any level, filter items by size or perform sort on any column.

You can see a pie chart by the Chart button. Click here to see a Pie Chart example.

You can also view a pie chart of up to 32 largest subfolders in the selected folder.

• In order to see the pie chart, you must sort the list on the Size column.
• You can see a pie chart on number of files too, provided you sort on that column.
• You can show more than 8 items by using the pull down "Maximum Pie Sections."
• Pie chart has some other options too, for example, to show labels next to the sections, show in 2D or 3D, show patterns instead of colors for monochrome printing.

Let's see what other folder and file lists are available in ShowSize. Click here to proceed.

File Types list helps you find out what file types (extensions) are taking the most disk space

• For example, in the accompanying screenshot, you can see that SYS files take up the most disk space.
• I have expanded the ZIP files group to see the details of the zip files taking up the space.
• The largest zip file is a deleted file sitting in the Recycle Bin. This also reminds me that I have not emptied the Recycle Bin.

Take a look at the next list in ShowSize. Click here to proceed.

Owners list helps you find out what file owners are taking the most disk space

• For example, in the accompanying screenshot, you can see that the owner "Administrators" takes up the most disk space. This is OK and expected because most of the files on a new Windows 10 system are admin owned.
• However, I see an empty owner and have expanded it in the list. What I find is interesting because files like pagefile.sys belong to this empty or hidden owner.

Use ShowSize and you will uncover lots of such interesting facts. Take a look at the next list in ShowSize. Click here to proceed.

Folders and files list allows you to sort and display folders and files together, in one list

• If you are seeing this list on the root of a disk drive, this list can be huge. In fact, it can be so huge that Ordinary or toy programs will choke up on such a list. That's why such a list is missing in Windows Explorer or File Manager.
• ShowSize is able to show this list due to its advanced virtual listing technology.
• Windows File Manager is not designed to show it because it will slow down the display and file operations which is not good for a file manager.
• The purpose of ShowSize is different. It scans once and then shows you all this information. It doesn't rescan til you ask it to.

Use ShowSize and you will get many such insights into file programs and their pros and cons. Take a look at the next list in ShowSize. Click here to proceed.

This is another innovation in ShowSize. By using "Only Files" list, you can see all the files in one flat list.

• If you didn't realize, read again. You see all the files, includng hidden files and even those in all subfolders, in a single flat list.
• This means, you can quickly find the biggest or latest modified files by doing a sort on that column.
• This is another huge list that ordinary software can not handle. If you run it on the root of a huge drive, the number of files can run into millions.

Take a look at the next list in ShowSize. Click here to proceed.

Similar to the "Only Files" list that you saw earlier, this "Only Folders" list in ShowSize shows all the folders in one flat list.

• You get a similar new perspective on folders that you won't find in other software.
• For example, you can quickly find the biggest or latest modified folders at any level by doing a sort on that column.

Take a look at the next list in ShowSize. Click here to proceed.

"Active Folders" List shows folders that are active in Windows, determined by the size and number of files modified in the last so many days

One example of its use can be this scenario. Suppose you suddenly find that your disk space has been consumed a lot in last few days. You change the number of days to 3 and see the resulting list. You will see which folders changed the most in last 3 days in terms of number of files or number of modified files.
ShowSize has some other unique and innovative features. Click here to know more.

Other innovative features of ShowSize

• Scan is cancelable: Scans to find folder sizes can be time consuming on huge drives. ShowSize provides a Cancel Scan feature to save your time if you change your mind and want to cancel out of scanning a huge folder. For example, you want to then resume scanning on smaller subfolders.
• How to save a directory listing to a file and view it later. You can save complete lists to view and analyze them later, even on a different system.
• Do advanced filtering on the saved lists: Paid version includes an additional program ShowSize Analyze that allows you to do advanced filtering on the saved reports. The screenshot shows ShowSize Analyze.
• Innovations such as, Exclude folders, cache of scan and huge capacity have already been described earlier.

This is the END of this presentation. Please download a trial copy of ShowSize and explore all these features to get a first-hand experience of their benefits.