Tip #3135 - AssessTree
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AssessTree
I clean my PC out a lot. I clean my parent's PC, I clean my uncle’s
PC, I clean my neighbor’s PC, I clean my neighbor's friend's PCs,
etc., etc. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I end up cleaning
a lot of PCs. This is a normal part of maintaining a healthy PC and it
should be done often if you expect top performance from your system. Now,
when I say clean your PC, I’m talking about a number of things that
when performed regularly and together, can really help your PC to be a
dependable piece of equipment.
Removing
unwanted programs, cleaning
temp files and defragging
your PC are all great ways to reclaim space and clean up your hard
drive. Another over shadowed procedure that can help tremendously with
reclaiming valuable hard drive space, is getting rid of big files. Files
you have maybe forgot about or maybe just didn’t realize were getting
so big. Who knew your My Pictures folder under the My Documents file was
6 GB in size?! Or, how about the folder you keep all of your MP3s in?
Wow, there’s another 3 GB!
Typically, next to
having too many unused programs installed on a PC, bloated files are the
biggest space user that I run across. So, after I uninstall unwanted programs
on a PC, the next step I usually take in a hard drive cleaning is to search
for large folders and files. Once the files are found, I must determine
what will stay on the hard drive, what can be moved to a removable media
disk (CD or DVD) and what can be deleted all together. Perform whatever
has been determined with the large files/folders, clean temp files and
defrag. That’s a good hard drive cleaning. You will be amazed at
the space you have reclaimed, which can translate into a longer hard drive
or operating system life.
The reason I told
you all that was so I could introduce you to this week's download, called
AssessTree. See, the techniques I mentioned above, such
as defragging your hard drive, cleaning out the temp files and removing
programs, that’s pretty easy to do. It can all be done with the
help of Windows. Looking for folders by size can be a little trickier
and convoluted in its process. I personally use a third party program,
which I like very much, but I decided to see if there was something out
there that could do the same thing, but for free. Well, I found one and
it does the job quite nicely.
AssessTree can scan
all the disk drives on your PC, including mapped drives. It looks for
large folders and files and generates a report of the results. This report
can be categorized by file name, branch (folder) size or a node (file)
size, which allows the user to easily determine what files are the biggest
and what/where they are. You can also get fancy with this program and
apply filters to exclude certain things or look for specific file names.
That’s up to you. Assess Tree is simple to use with straightforward
results that can help you reclaim precious hard drive space. Add AssessTree
to your list of cleaning software (or as I call it the cleaning crew)
and use it the next time you clean up your hard drive. Go ahead and see
who's hoggin' up all your hard drive room!
You can download Assess
Tree here.
Hope you enjoy!
~ Chad Stelnicki
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