WinDirStat
The internet is littered with hard drive utilities for Windows XP. However I find WinDirStat as one of the most valuable hard drive utilities used by our help desk. Workstations provided to our staff have the business standard operating environment(SOE) running Windows XP but these machines are not locked down. These means users can install non-business applications (like iTunes) on their workstations or clutter the local hard drive with music files, photos, etc. Most users don’t realize they’ve used up all the hard drive space until Windows XP notifies them.
(Note: There are many pros and cons on having a lock down machine. However these are beyond the scope of this topic.)
Running WinDirStat can quickly generate reports on what’s occupying the hard drive space and where these files are located. It even displays the file types. You can instantly identify where the video files, mp3s, office documents and application install files are. From the reports we can instantly make decision on which files to delete from the hard drive.
Our of our golden IT rules is if files are not business related, it should be removed or deleted if having the files there affects system performance or user productivity.
This hard drive utility can scan specific hard drive or multiple hard drives in the system. To assist in locating where all your hard drive space is being consumed head to WinDirStat and download this very handy utility for Windows XP.
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