Latest - 12/04/2002

0.9.2 release of clDuw. Fixed (probably) an occasional killer bug that would not allow clDuw to scan some hard drive letters. Also added support for file extension data per a request from How Much Information? project at the University of California at Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems. Check out the new option on the View menu. Send any feedback direct to me or via the Mailing List.

Overview

clDuw is based on a utility I've used for a long time, DUW by Markus Seger. I created clDuw because DUW and other similar utilities only report the total size of files in a directory, not the amount of disk space used in a directory. There's a difference.

To keep drive I/O efficient, drives have clusters that are blocks of space. Files actually consume the size of the number of clusters required to contain the file, not just their actual size. So a 1k file written to a drive with 64k clusters takes up 1 cluster, 64k of disk space, leaving 63k unused and unavailable for any other file. If a second 1k file is written to the same directory, it is put in its own cluster, consuming another 64k.

Cleaning up hard drive space is what's crucial, and tools like DUW won't necessarily float large disk space directories to your attention if the sum total of their files is much less.

My aim was to recreate a tool like DUW and enhance it with the disk space usage data. I also improved the performance somewhat by caching the directory data removing unnecessary disk scans.

NOTE: Microsoft does not assert accuracy on the cluster size it reports on Windows 95 systems previous to OSR2. This means the disk usage numbers may be incorrect, but the tool is still useful in finding directories with a lot of wasted space even though you don't know if you can trust the exact numbers.

clDuw is Open Source with a BSD License, hosted by SourceForge and written in Delphi.

Source can be obtained via anon CVS ( instructions here). You can also browse the CVS repo via the web.

Features

• clDuw runs on 95, 98, Me, NT 4 & 2000.
• List total cumulative file size and disk usage for each directory on your drive.
• Drill down through your directory structure to find places where space could be recovered by deleting or archiving unnecessary files.
• Jump to Explorer from any selected directory name.
• Additional stats like file count and average file size.
• Display total disk size, free disk size and cluster size.
• Display all stats per file extension

Mailing List

Click here to subscribe.

Known Problems

• Currently, the disk usage numbers are slightly higher than what Explorer (later versions) reports on the properties page of a directory. The difference is insignificant for the task of freeing up some hard drive space. I'll hunt down the problem eventually.

Thanks to: Peter Haas for his code to correctly obtain the disk cluster size from FAT32 drives (Win95 OSR2/98/Me), Markus Seger - creator of the original DUW, and Project JEDI for a great library in the Jcl.

Release History

0.9.2.24 - 12/04/2002

• Fixed bug that would prevent certain drive letters from being scanned.
• Added stats by file extension view.

0.9.1.21 - 10/11/2001

• Fixed problem that would cause directories to be skipped.
• (This release never made it to the web page here)

0.9.0.20 - 7/20/2001

• Initial Release