Chardrive your harddrive

If the space on a harddrive gets smaller and smaller, then it is time to put some files away. Either they can be put on a backup media or deleted forever. The big question is what to kick first? Large files or long time untouched files?

A very good helper is the PathFinder application, because it can count all directory size contents even recursively and you can sort by size or any other properties. So you will find large files very quick. But this can take much time and needs a lot of attention not to remove files, which should not be removed.

When surfing I found a free application called GrandPerspective which scans a folder or drive you have specified for sizes and then displays a graphical block view.

Grand Perspective

You can point with the mouse over the blocks and you see details like file size, file name and which directory it is. Files and directories are grouped by colors, so that you see at the first glance what belongs together. With the context menu you even can reveal the directory in the finder, so that you can delete the files or directories from every level. A rescan function is also included, so that you can compare the before and after version. Scanning is really fast, so that you even could scan the root of any mass storage device.