Ever wonder where your hard drive space went? Find yourself needing to free up a few gigs to download that Snow Leopard update? While you can manually start checking individual folders and files, this can be a tedious and daunting task. Fear not, there is a better way.
GrandPerspective and Disk Inventory X are both programs that visually break down hard drive usage by file and folder.
GrandPerspective
You can customize the programs to color code different types of files, and also run custom scans of specific folders or partitions.
Disk Inventory X
The layout of the programs are a bit different, but functionally they are the same. Both allow you to see the path of each file/folder you click on.
Recently, I noticed I had “lost” almost 50 gigs of hard drive space in less than a week. Knowing I hadn’t installed or saved anything that large, I opened up Disk Inventory X to help me out. Come to find out, CrashPlan was freaking out and instead of incremental backups, it had switched to full back ups, every day. Without one of these programs, I could have wasted precious Moot Court prepping hours trying to find the cause. Instead, it took less than two minutes. And even if you don’t need to account for “missing” space, it’s just cool to get a visual snap shot of your hard drive.
Both programs are free so check ‘em out!
