Windows only: DP Shredder scrubs files, folders, and free disk space with Department-of-Defense-approved methods. Completely stand-alone and small, DP Shredder is a great addition to your flash drive toolbox. After selecting the disk, folder, or file you want to securely delete with DP Shredder, you can select the method and number of times the method will be applied. You can use a basic overwrite with all zeros, pseudo-random blocks of data, or opt to use more robust methods. DP Shredder can wipe with the power of US DoD 5220.22.M ECE 7X—which, if you must know, deletes the files, overwrite all locations with a character, its complement, then a random character followed by an overwrite, and it’s repeated seven times. At the end of a single round, every bit of data you’ve deleted has been over-written 49 times. If you need more assurance that your data is gone, it’s time to break out the drill and find a far-away landfill or e-cycling centre. DP Shredder is freeware, Windows only.
DP Shredder [The Portable Freeware Collection]Windows only: Xinorbis is a portable and quite powerful disk analyzer. Graphs, tables, trees, and report generation ensure you know what is going on with your data. After scanning your disks—the results can be viewed individually for each drive or merged together to provide a system overview of all your storage—you can drill down into your data. Data can be sorted and graphed by file type, biggest folders, date of creation, 101 biggest and smallest files, and data distribution by user. Results can be saved with the Report function and compared to future scans. Additionally there is a basic file navigator that places a handy bar beside each folder indicating how much of the drive it takes up. Xinorbis is freeware, Windows only. Thanks SanwariCethegus!
XinorbisWindows only: Simple Directory Analyzer provides a full range of tools for examining files and folders. Drill down through your data with a variety of filters to see how your space is being used. Simple Directory Analyzer uses a drag and drop interface to load directories, a time saver if you’re already staring at the folder you want to analyse and don’t want to browse through the directory tree in the Select Folder dialogue box. Once you drag a directory you want examined into the main window, you can apply filters based on size, file type, modification date, and more (you can even include sub folders) for a more detailed look at what’s going on in that folder. Simple Directory Analyzer provides additional tools for seeking out duplicate files and hidden files; it even boasts a handy Biggest Files function that allows you to quickly weed out only the biggest files in the directory. Like graphs? SDA can also draw simple graphs displaying your biggest files and most common file types. Simple Directory Analyzer is freeware, requires .NET 3.5, Windows only.
Simple Directory Analyzer [via Freeware Home]Windows only: We’ve previously highlighted some disk space visualization tools with all kinds of neat graphics, but Treesize Free shoots for just the opposite—a clean, simple interface showing how much of your hard drive is filled by which folders. As you might guess, it stacks up the root folders by size, then lets you collapse them in nesting trees to see which sub-folders are eating up that 160GB drive you thought you’d never fill. You can adjust for KB/MB/GB viewing, scan CDs and removable drives, and switch to percentages instead of data bits, but one of Treesize’s really cool features is simply giving you all the same tools you have in Windows Explorer’s right-click menu on its tree view pane—delete, copy, cut, etc. Treesize Free is a free download for Windows systems only. Treesize Free [JAM Software via Red Ferret Journal]
Windows only: Disk utility FosiX Lite is a visual hard disk analyser in the vein of previously covered WinStatDir and JDiskReport. What sets FosiX apart is the interactivity of the bar charts and pie graphs it produces. Run the application and see that you have two directories at the root level taking up a huge amount of space? Click on one and you’re immediately inside the directory looking at new graph showing how space is distributed in that directory. FosiX lets you quickly see and drill down through large directories to get a sense of how your data is stored and the amount of space it is taking up. FosiX Lite is a free download for Windows only.
FosiX Lite [via Life Rocks 2.0]Windows only: Analyse your hard drive usage and find out what’s eating up your disk space with freeware application DriveSpacio. Similar to previously mentioned WinDirStat, DriveSpacio sets itself apart with a different approach to displaying your drive usage. Many users will likely prefer the bar graphs and pie charts of DriveSpacio to WinDirStat, but the biggest drawback is that—unlike WinDirStat—it doesn’t currently allow you to directly delete or launch a folder from within its interface. That means that once you find something you want to delete, you still have to navigate to it manually in Explorer to delete it. Regardless, the freeware, Windows only DirveSpacio is a great alternative when you’re looking to visualise your hard drive usage. Mac users, check out previously mentioned GrandPerspective.
Windows only: One of our favourite PC cleansers CCleaner (which stands for “Crap Cleaner”) saw an upgrade this week. Since the last time we mentioned CCleaner several new versions have come out; this week’s added support for the Firefox 3 beta plus performance improvements and bug fixes. CCleaner scans your PC for unnecessary temporary and log files, cookies, memory dumps, and more and wipes them out at the press of the “Run Cleaner” button. You might be surprised at how much disk space it can recover—in fact, it managed to clear out 1.6GB of crap from my PC. See screenshot evidence after the jump.
Mac OS X only: Freeware application AppCleaner completely uninstalls applications from your Mac. As most of us know, the process of “uninstalling” applications on the Mac is generally as simple as trashing the application, but many programs leave behind settings and other small files that continue to take up space on your hard drive. AppCleaner identifies these files and takes them down with the application they belong to. To use it, you can either drag and drop the app you want to uninstall onto AppCleaner or click the tabs to select what you want to uninstall from the list of apps, widgets, or plug-ins AppCleaner finds. If you’d rather not run AppCleaner every time you want to uninstall an app, check out previously mentioned AppTrap. AppCleaner is freeware, Mac OS X only. AppCleaner [via MacApper]
