A niggling over a year ago , I covered two of my pet public utility company for Mac OS X , WhatSize ( ) andGrandPerspective ( ) . Both are plan to serve you envision out where all your disk space has gone ; however , they do so in very different elbow room : GrandPerspective provides a visual mental representation of every Indian file on your driveway ( or in a special leaflet ) at once , making it easygoing to see which files , and which groups of standardized filing cabinet , are taking up the most outer space ; WhatSize gives you a columnar lean of file cabinet and directory sorted by size of it , have it better for quickly traversing your hard drive ’s contents to find the bragging — literally — offenders .
Since then I ’ve discovered another good resolution to the “ Where did all my drive outer space go ? ” quandary , JDiskReport 1.3.0 (; loose ) , which propose a turn of the ocular appeal of GrandPerspective along with the folder - by - folder pilotage of WhatSize .
launching JDiskReport and , after agreeing to the software permission , you ’ll be postulate if you want to glance over a exceptional volume or folder , scan your boot intensity ( / , your main hard drive ) , or open a previously - saved scan ( a nice feature of JDiskReport is the power to salvage a CAT scan for afterward viewing ; the scan name the single file sizes and distribution at the time you saved it , rather than a “ hot ” list ) .
How long the mental process of scanning your full hard thrust takes depends on the drive ; scan my 320 GB boot drive , containing approximately 262 GB of datum across nearly 900,000 file , took about 4 minutes . When the scan is done , you ’ll see a window listing the brochure at the root stratum of your thrust — strike that ’s what you take to scan — on the left field , and a graphical breakdown of the turgid of those folders on the right ; the default option sentiment is a pie chart . press any leaflet name , or on any slicing of the Proto-Indo European chart , to switch the aspect to that folder . you’re able to continue this process to dive down into the biggest brochure on your private road and find the individual files and folders get up the most space .
( you could sort the single file list on the left by name , entire folder / file size , or identification number of file cabinet contain ; you could also opt to list files and brochure or folders only . Note that if you choose to view by the number of files contained , JDiskReport ’s graphical display will alter accordingly , with leaflet containing more file represented by larger gash of the pie chart than folders containing fewer files , disregarding of the comparative sizes of those folders . )
If this were the extent of JDiskReport ’s functionality , it would n’t be much more than a in writing version of WhatSize . But JDiskReport includes a number of utile options . For example , you are n’t restrict to a pie chart ; you’re able to also reckon each directory as an expand pie chart , a legal profession chart , or a elaborated mesa ; here are exemplar of each for a home directory :
Although I do n’t find the exposit Proto-Indo European chart to be very readable , I care the ginmill chart prospect , both because it provide a sieve - by - size graphical view of each leaflet , and because it includes many smaller items omitted — for the determination of well-heeled reading — from the pie chart . The table view is also utilitarian , as it lets you see a WhatSize - similar list of files in a particular folder , sorted by size of it or number of enclosed file cabinet .
Another useful set of options can be accessed via buttons just above the study region . Top 50 displays a list of the 50 largest file in the current folder or , or else , the 50 most - recently- or least - lately - modified single file . Size Dist displays — using whatever view choice you ’ve chosen ( pie chart , barroom chart , or table)—the size distribution of files in the current folder ; in other words , what proportion of place used is from files larger than 1 GB , between 256 Bachelor of Medicine and 1 GB , and so on , all the mode down to less - than-1 KB .
Modified displays the proportion of space used by the current booklet due to files modify today , yesterday , 1 to 7 day ago , and so on , all the way to “ Over 10 years . ” Unfortunately , this view is n’t as useful as it could be , because there ’s no way to figure outwhichfiles go inwhichcategory — so , for object lesson , you ca n’t easily get rid of those 10 - twelvemonth - old files . in conclusion , Types shows a partitioning of data file by single file character . But , again , there ’s no way of life to like a shot get at any of those single file ; for example , if you see that .aif files are taking up 2 GB of space in your home directory , it would be utile to be able to view a list of those files to make up one’s mind if there are any you may get free of .
In any view , right - clicking ( or Control - clicking ) turn over you the option to copy the current chart or mesa data , in tab - subtend format , to the clipboard for glue in a spreadsheet or other papers .
Although I like JDiskReport ’s many options , it does have a number of limitations . I mentioned above the inability to view which files are let in in particular category . Similarly , you ca n’t blue-pencil a single file or folder from within JDiskReport , or even give away that item in the Finder ; you have to manually navigate to the file cabinet in the Finder . Also , unlike WhatSize , JDiskReport does n’t scan file in other substance abuser ’ home directory unless you launch JDiskReport with antecedent exclusive right ( for model , by using a utility such as pretender ) . eventually , JDiskReport is written in Java ; although this means it ’s completely cross - program , it also means it works as well as most Java apps — which is to say not as well as aboriginal Mac OS decade software . In my testing , JDiskReport used quite a bit of retention and was slower than WhatSize , and it out of the blue quit once . And despite its OS - disco biscuit - like window , JDiskReport still has element — for example , frightful toolbar buttons and contextual menus — that display its Java roots .
JDiskReport 1.3.0 want Java ; Mac OS X 10.4 ( Panthera tigris ) users can get the former rendering of Javahere .
