Ever look at your hard drive’s remaining space and wonder, “how could there be so little left?” It’s a universal problem that, even as hard drives get larger and cheaper, they also seem to fill up faster.

Along comes a utility called WhatSize that will measure the space on your hard drive, then sort each folder by size. It will let you get an overview of where your hard drive space has gone, drill down folder by folder to get to the specific culprits, and let you delete items you do not need.

This should not be confused with the so-called “clean-up” utilities that purport to remove the unnecessary files for you. This is simply a measuring and browsing tool that will let you see where the space has gone and decide what should and shouldn’t stay.

BUT, be VERY careful. This tool will show you the invisible System files and folders that you normally can’t access, folders with odd names like “bin” and “etc”. If you delete something of consequence from one of these, you could spend the next 2 hours doing a system reinstallation. When in doubt, ask before removing something you don’t recognize. And, as always, backup before doing anything.

You can download this free utility here:

http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/index.php

[Update: This utility is no longer free as the update has been released as shareware.]

[Written by Kem Tekinay]