Disk Management - File Size by Directory Report

[DanC]

A few months ago, I found the free space on my hard drive shrinking significantly on a daily basis, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out the cause. As it turned out, I was suffering from a Windows issue that I was not alone in dealing with. I was able to get the issue resolved by our IT department, but not before I spent a fair amount of time searching through my directories, compressing and deleting files, running Disk Cleanup, etc., none of which was particularly helpful. So, I decided to look to Alteryx for an answer.

I created a simple workflow (attached and created in 11.0) which uses the Directory tool to read the attributes of all of the files on my computer. Then, I grouped the files by directory and summarized the file size. After a sort, I instantly found the culprit. There were hundreds of CAB files (a Windows archive file format) that were 100 MBs each which were being created erroneously by Windows. I was able to share this with my IT associate which helped him greatly in diagnosing and subsequently fixing the issue.

Most of you are unlikely to be experiencing the same issue (but if you are, you're welcome). However, this workflow may come in handy for other reasons. If anything, just to help you manage your files and disk space by pointing out which files are hogging up all of your hard drive space!

Thanks for reading!