Microsoft is working on a built-in 'Use Disk' command line utility that reports how much disk space a directory uses.
Over time, it's common to run out of storage space and not know which programs or files are using up hard drive space. Previously, users needed to download free tools like TreeSize to list the directories using the most space.
While playing with the new Windows 10 Insider versions 20277 and 21277 released last week, BleepingComputer discovered that Microsoft had been silently introducing a new DiskUsage utility. This utility can scan your entire drive or specified folders and report how many each folder is in use.
DiskUsage is located in C:\Windows\System32\diskusage.exe and will display the user guide when entering diskusage /?, As shown below.
This program is in the early stages of development, some features are not working as expected and some misspellings in the manual.
For those interested, the complete instructions for use are below:
DiskUsage - Disk Usage
Description: Summarize disk usage recursively for the given
directory.
Usage : diskusage
[Options] [Directory]
Options :
/a,
/systemAndReserve displays size for
system files and reserved space
/c, /csv displays in csv format
/d, /maxDepth=N displays directory information only
if it is N or
fewer levels below command line argument
/e,
/minFileSize=SIZE displays directory
information only if its FileSize
is greater or equal than SIZE
/f,
/minSizeOnDisk=SIZE displays directory
information only if its SizeOnDisk
is greater or equal than SIZE
/g,
/displayFlag=FLAG specifies the flags
value to determin which column(s) to display
column value description
SizeOnDisk 0x001 the on disk size
FileSize 0x002 the end of file size
SizePerDir 0x004 sum of SizeOnDisk for top level child
Files 0x008 number of child files
ChildDirs 0x010
number of child directories
FilesPerDir 0x020 number of top level child files
DirsPerDir 0x040 number of top level child directories
CreationTime 0x080 file creation timestamp
LastAccessTime 0x100 file last access timestamp
LastWriteTime 0x200 file last write timestamp
Attributes 0x400 file attributes
/h,
/humanReadable displays size in
human readable format
/i, /iniFile=FILE takes all the parameters from an INI
file.
NOTE: SCENARIO name must be speificed via /j (/scenario)
/j, /secnario=SCENARIO specifies the scenario name for the INI file
/l, /allLinks count all hardlinks separately (By
default, files with multiple
hardlinks are counted only once towards the first link name)
/m, /multipleName count only files with more than one
link names
/n,
/nameFilter=FILTER count only files
whose name matches the name filter
/p,
/preferredPath=PATH count files with
multiple link names towards the first link that's
under PATH if it exists
NOTE: This options must not be specified togerther
with /l (/allLinks)
/q, /virtual recurse into virtual directories
/r, /skipReparse skip recursing into reparse
directories
/s, /skipResurse skip recursing into child directories
when calculating sizes
/t,
/TopDirectory=N displays Top N
directories by SizeOnDisk in descending order
/u, /TopFile=N displays Top N files by SizeOnDisk
in descending order
/v, /verbose displays verbose error information
/x, /clearDefault do not display the default selected columns
Test the new DiskUsage utility
Microsoft's new DiskUsage tool is in the early stages of development, so it has a bit of roughness around the edges. With that said, BleepingComputer decided to give it a try and see how it works.
By default, when running DiskUsage, it will report file and folder sizes in bytes, which is not as useful as displaying sizes in MB, GB, etc. Thankfully, Microsoft has included an a / h argument to show the human-readable size we'll use in our usage examples below.
When we ran this test on a virtual machine we didn't have a lot of data or large programs installed, so we tested it with the C: \ Windows directory.
Since this tool requires administrative privileges, you must first open an elevated Windows 10 command prompt before using diskusage.exe otherwise it will show an error.
To see folders in C: \ Windows that are larger than 1 GB in size, we ran the following command:
diskusage /minFileSize=1073741824 /h c:\windows
As you can see below, DiskUsage has listed all folders, including the C: \ Windows folder, which are larger than 1 GB in size.
diskusage /t=5 /h c:\windows
Unfortunately, the output of this command is not as expected. As you can see below, it shows an ordered list of 5 folders, but based on our previous commands, they are not the directories we expected.
We guess the above command shows the largest directories, without looking at the files in their subdirectories.
DiskUsage also includes other features like listing top size files using / u option, as shown in following command:
diskusage /u=5 /h c:\windows
As you can see below, instead of showing the top five folders, DiskUsage displays the five largest files.
Other features included in DiskUsage include creating a configuration file that contains the options you want to use automatically, customizing the output, and the ability to skip different types of folders.
As stated earlier, DiskUsage is still in its early stages and there is no information as to when it will be available. You can test it out now by installing the latest Windows 10 Insider builds.
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