Hard drives keep getting bigger and bigger, but somehow we still run out of space. MP3s and other media files are immensely popular—and immense. Programs are bigger and data files are bigger. Windows Explorer isn't much help with assessing your storage situation; it will tell you the size of all selected files in a folder, but nothing about the files in that folder's subfolders. DiskPie is a utility that identifies the biggest consumers of disk space. Customizable, printable pie charts let you see at a glance which folders and file types are taking up the most space. An Explorer-style view lets you navigate to the folder you want to chart, and display the number of bytes in and below the selected folder. The utility can display and print a report of the largest files in the selected folder. Armed with the information that DiskPie provides, you can decide how best to allocate the space on your disk.

Version 1 of DiskPie, published in 1994, was designed for Windows 3.x and did not support long filenames, network drives, or drives larger than 2GB. DiskPie 2 is a complete rewrite for 32-bit Windows, and it offers an improved user interface in addition to an enhanced feature set. DiskPie 2 runs under Microsoft Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP. The Delphi 6 source code is provided with the utility for those interested in seeing how the software works. Note that PC Magazine programs are copyrighted and cannot be distributed, whether modified or unmodified. Use is subject to the terms and conditions of the license agreement distributed with the programs.

Using DiskPie 2 To install DiskPie 2, run the supplied installation program, Setup.exe. To uninstall the program, use the Add/Remove Programs applet in Windows Control Panel.

At start-up, DiskPie 2 displays an Explorer-style tree view of your computer's folders (see Figure 1). Use this tree to select the drive or folder you want to examine, whether local or across the network. If you prefer, you can type the pathname in the Address box at the top, then press Enter.

You can invoke DiskPie 2's functions in several different ways. Nearly all can be activated through the main menu, and the toolbar includes buttons for the most commonly used functions. Right-clicking will open a pop-up menu with choices appropriate to the context, and many of the commands are associated with keyboard shortcuts. For simplicity, this article will reference the main menu commands, but don't forget that the other options exist.

Finding the Fattest Folders To see what folders are taking up space on your hard drive, select a drive or folder in the Explorer view, then click on the Folder pie tab or choose Folder pie from the Go menu. DiskPie 2 will sum up the sizes of all the files in and below the selected folder. While it does so, the rest of the utility's functions will be disabled, and you'll see a rotating pie (see Figure 2). You can halt a calculation at any time by selecting Stop from the Go menu.

DiskPie 2 makes a list with one entry for each subfolder of the current folder and one for the folder itself. For each subfolder, the utility records the total size of files in and below the folder itself. For the current folder, the program records the size of files residing directly in the folder. It sorts the list in descending size order, and displays the data in a pie chart (see Figure 3). Each slice can be labeled with the name of the subfolder it represents, or the label In folder if the slice represents files in the current folder. If the number of pie slices would be greater than the specified maximum (16, by default), it lumps the smallest slices together in a slice named Other.

In its default configuration, the pie chart's slices are identified by a color-matching legend at the bottom. You can customize the display to label each pie slice instead of using a legend. As you move the mouse over the chart, the program's status bar will display the name of the folder associated with the pie slice, as well as the amount of disk space the folder is using. To see the detailed information for all of the pie slices at once, choose Detail from the Pie menu. This yields a text representation of the pie's data. The information for each slice is on its own line, and a colored rectangle associate's the line with the corresponding slice (see Figure 4). Click the Print button to print out the detail information. When analyzing the space used by folders, DiskPie keeps a separate list of the 20 largest individual files, sorted in descending size order. To see this list, select Largest files from the Pie menu. This report (see Figure 5) can be printed.

If you find that one folder is using a large amount of disk space, you may want to see a breakdown of that folder's contents. Just double-click the pie slice, the label, or the legend entry. DiskPie 2 will calculate and display a new pie chart for the folder. To go back to the parent folder, select Parent folder from the Go menu, or press the Backspace key.

Gathering the data for a folder pie can take several minutes, so once DiskPie 2 has obtained the total size information, it hangs onto the information until you shut down the program. The next time you ask for the same pie chart, DiskPie 2 will display it much faster. The same is true when you drill down into a subfolder; the sizes have already been worked out during the calculations for the parent. On the other hand, if you do file clean-up work in Explorer while DiskPie 2 is running, the stored data can get out of sync with reality. In that case, you should select Refresh from the File menu to discard the stored data and recalculate the pies.

Finding Frequent File Types Sometimes knowing what kind of files are eating up your disk space is more important than where they're congregating. For example, learning that your teenager's MP3 files occupy 80 percent of the family's shared hard drive may spur you negotiate for their archiving to CD-R discs. Just select the drive or folder you want to check and click the File type pie tab, or choose File type pie from the Go menu.

DiskPie 2 will examine every file in and below the specified folder and perform the necessary calculations. When finished, it will rank the file types in descending order by size and display them in a pie chart (see Figure 6). If there are more types to report than the specified maximum number of slices, the smallest will be combined into an Other slice. As with the folder pie, you can select Detail or Largest files from the Pie menu to view or print the corresponding reports. You can't, however, drill down into a file-type pie by double-clicking. Also, DiskPie 2 can't retain the size information for every file on disk; that would use too much memory. So each time you request a file-type pie, the calculation must be performed anew.

Explorer View and Explorer When you return to the Explorer view after creating a folder pie, you'll notice something new. If DiskPie 2 has stored size information for the selected folder, that information will be displayed in the status bar along with the number of files in and below that folder. If the status bar remains blank when you select a particular folder, the size information isn't yet available. To get the total size for a folder without creating a folder pie, select Calculate folder size from the Go menu. The process takes about as long as generating a folder pie, and the data is saved in the same way, so you can get a folder pie relatively quickly after you calculate a folder's size. If the size data has been gathered for the current folder, you can also select Largest files from the Pie menu, even though no pie is displayed.

DiskPie 2's Explorer view is just a navigational aid; it's not meant to replace Explorer. To perform file management tasks, select Open in Explorer from the File menu. DiskPie 2 will launch an instance of Windows Explorer displaying the currently selected folder. Remember that if you delete files or make other significant changes, you should select Refresh from DiskPie 2's File menu to get back in sync.

DiskPie 2's connection with Explorer goes both ways. When you right-click a folder in Windows Explorer, you'll find an item named DiskPie view in the pop-up menu. Choose it to load that folder into DiskPie 2. Note that if you do this after selecting multiple folders, Explorer will launch an instance of DiskPie 2 for each. This can be handy if you want to compare the file-type breakdown in different folders. If you right-click a non-file folder such as My Computer and choose DiskPie view, the program will select C: as a starting point.