Where’s My Space Gone?

I started to notice disk space getting short when I switched to using a laptop as my main computer.  Naturally over time space gets used up by media files and applications, especially games, but it can be hard to figure out why.

Fortunately there are several tools designed to help visualise and identify space wasting files.  This can make it easy to delete unwanted giants or move them off to external drives.

DaisyDisk

Price: $19.99 (around £14.50) with a 15 day free trial

Homepage: DaisyDisk

DaisyDisk scans drives or folders before use.  On my machine it hit 10-30% CPU during the scan.  The dock icon shows the scan progress, so it’s safe to leave in the background while you work.  The scan took 5 minutes for the whole drive.

The overview of the whole drive makes it easy to identify major groups of content: applications and iTunes libraries will stand out for most people.  It’s also possible to drill into the disk’s tree which shows a cool animation morphing between each graph.  DaisyDisk displays a handy navigation breadcrumb at the top of the window so it’s easy to get back to previous levels.

DaisyDisk is simple but incredibly slick and easy to use.

GrandPerspective

Price: Free (open source)

Homepage: GrandPerspective

GrandPerspective opens up with a file dialogue which allows you to select a folder to scan.  I selected Macintosh HD to get the entire tree.  CPU usage hovered at around 80%, double that of DaisyDisk.  There’s no Dock progress indicator and it only displays the total number of items scanned, so it’s difficult to judge how long a scan will take.  The same scan as DaisyDisk took around 3-4 minutes, so it’s a little bit faster but more aggressive.

Opening up the drawer shows options for colour schemes and overall info.  It’s also possible to zoom into the visualisation.  GrandPerspective permits file deletion once it’s been enabled in the application’s preferences.

Disk Inventory X

Price: Free (open source)

Homepage: Disk Inventory X

Disk Inventory X is the first application I found in this category back in 2005.  It’s basic but has really helped me manage disk space over the years.  The visualisation is similar to GrandPerspective, and doesn’t show a meaningful progress indicator.  A scan uses around 80% CPU and took x minutes.  I noticed that the process is PowerPC, but I can’t find Intel binaries.  There’s probably some out there seeing as it’s open source.

OmniDiskSweeper

Price: Free

Homepage: OmniDiskSweeper

OmniDiskSweeper is very simple, there’s no visualisation but it’s easy to see what folders using lots of space.  It’s also relatively fast, and shows results as it goes.

WhatSize

Price: $12.99 (£9.50)

Homepage: WhatSize

WhatSize is similar to Omni’s product, but also displays a visualisation similar to DaisyDisk’s.