What's filling up your hard drive?

1. Use a third-party disk space analyzer

Disk space analysis apps will scan your storage and list the files in descending order of size, with the largest files at the top. This makes it easy to see what's taking up the most space. I'm using Disk Space Analyzer for this on macOS, while on Windows I'm using TreeSize.

How to Use Disk Space Analyzer on macOS

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1. Download and install .
2. Launch the application, select the storage drive you want to scan from the left sidebar and click Start Scanning .
3. Grant all necessary permissions and allow the app to complete the scan.
4. Select the data you want to delete, click Review to Remove , then select Remove .

Repeat these steps for all large files.

How to use TreeSize on Windows

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1. Download and install the application.
2. Launch the application with admin rights, go to the Scan tab , click Select Directory and select the drive you want to scan.
3. Wait a moment; the application will display large files sorted in descending order by size.
4. Expand the folders that take up the most space and delete unnecessary files to free up storage space.
5. You can click the Last Modified column header to see large files that have not been used recently.

Go through the list and delete any large files you no longer need.

2. Use the operating system's built-in tools

If you don't want to use third-party apps, Windows and macOS offer built-in tools to help you scan and delete large files.

macOS

1. Click the Apple menu in the upper left corner and select System Settings .
2. Navigate to General > Storage , where macOS will show you which apps, documents, and system data are consuming storage space.
3. Click the information icon (ⓘ) next to the type of data taking up the most space, select the file or app you want to delete, and click Delete .

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Windows

1. Right-click the Start button and open Settings .
2. Go to System > Storage and wait for Windows to scan for the data that's taking up the most space. Open folders like "Other" or "Installed Apps" to see which items are taking up the most space, listed in descending order by size.
3. Delete any unnecessary data to free up storage space.

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You can also manually search for large files in specific folders. Select the drive or folder you want to scan on Windows, type "size: gigantic" in the search bar, and sort the results by file size to find the largest files. On macOS, select the folder you want to scan and type " size:>size in bytes" in the search bar. macOS will filter for files larger than that size.

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3. Don't forget about these unusually large apps!

When checking which folders and applications are taking up the most space on your storage drive, keep an eye out for duplicate files as they take up valuable storage space unnecessarily.

If you've ever used virtual machines, you should check to see if they're taking up a lot of space on your disks. If your virtualization software offers a "Dynamically allocated storage" option for virtual drives, consider enabling it. This feature allows virtual machines to only take up the amount of storage they actually need, rather than the total amount of space allocated to them.

Backups can also take up a lot of space because they often copy large amounts of data, store multiple versions of files, and include redundancies for safety. If you frequently perform full backups instead of incremental backups, this can add to your storage burden. So, switching to incremental backups and reducing the backup frequency can help alleviate this problem.

Kareem Winters

Update 31 August 2024