Reading Results

Reading Results

WinDirStat presents one scan through several linked views. Start with the largest files and folders, then use the visualization and other tabs to understand what occupies the space.

File Tree

The All Files tab is the primary result view. Expand large folders, sort by size columns, and work down until you find specific files or folders that explain disk usage. Right-click a list header to choose which columns are visible. The Folder List settings page also controls optional columns in the main tree.

Common columns:

Column	Meaning
Size Proportion	Visual size bar showing an item's share of its parent and the total scan.
Percentage	Share of the total scan or parent folder, depending on the percentage display mode.
Physical Size	Disk space allocated to the item. This can differ from logical size because of compression, sparse files, hardlinks, cluster size, or file-system behavior.
Logical Size	File content length reported by the file system. This is the size most programs show as file size.
Files, Folders, Items	Counts below a folder.
Last Change	Last write time.
Attributes	File attribute letters.
Owner	File owner, if the owner column is enabled.
Hash Prefix	Hash state or prefix for files involved in duplicate detection or manual hashing.

Use View > Use Physical Size or Use Logical Size to choose the size basis for the visualization, size proportions, and percentages. View > Show Absolute Percentages uses the total scan as the denominator; uncheck it to show percentages relative to the item's parent. Absolute percentages are enabled by default.

Hover over a size proportion bar to see both the total-scan and parent-folder percentages.

Attribute letters:

Letter	Meaning
R	Read-only
H	Hidden
S	System
A	Archive
@	Reparse point, such as a symlink, junction, or mount point
C	Compressed
O	Offline
E	Encrypted
Z	Sparse

The status bar shows selection counts and size statistics, including the number of selected items, files, and folders.

Free and Unknown Space

Options > Show Free Space adds a <Free Space> item under drives. It represents space Windows reports as free.

Options > Show Unknown adds an <Unknown> item under drives. Unknown space is the difference between drive usage reported by Windows and the files WinDirStat could account for. It can come from file-system metadata, restore points and shadow storage, inaccessible folders, excluded paths, hardlinks, or changes made while scanning.

Volume and free-space statistics are also available for administrative drive shares such as \\server\C$. Flame graphs and sunbursts label free and unknown space when these items are shown.

Hardlinks

When hardlink processing is enabled, WinDirStat can identify files that share the same file record. This prevents duplicate physical space from being counted multiple times. Hardlinked files can appear under a <Hardlinks> item, and selecting the physical size of a hardlink can navigate between the hardlink summary and the actual file entry.

Extension List

The extension list groups files by extension. It shows extension, color, description, total bytes, percentage of bytes, and file count. Use it to find which file types use the most space and identify their visualization colors.

Right-click an extension to search for matching files, or double-click it. Options > Group Unregistered Types combines file extensions that Windows does not recognize into a shared group and color.

Visualizations and Window Layouts

The View menu selects the visualization:

View	What it shows
Treemap > Rows	Nested rectangles arranged in rows; the traditional KDirStat layout. Each file occupies an area proportional to its size.
Treemap > Squarified	Nested rectangles arranged to favor square shapes; the traditional SequoiaView layout.
Treemap > Hilbert or Moore	Alternative rectangle layouts following space-filling curves.
Flame Graph	Folder depth in stacked rows, with widths proportional to size.
Sunburst	Folder depth in concentric rings, with angular spans proportional to size.

File colors correspond to the extension list. Selecting a shape selects the corresponding item; hovering shows its path and size in the status bar. Use View > Zoom In to focus on the selection, then Zoom Out or Zoom Reset to return to a broader view. Select Parent and Reselect Child move through the selection hierarchy.

For treemaps, View > Show Extensions adds extension labels where they fit. View > Show Folder Frames adds folder borders and names where there is enough room. Appearance settings are described in Settings.

Use the toolbar's Window Layout chooser to arrange the results, file types, and visualization panes. Options > Show Visualization (F9) and Show File Types (F8) toggle the optional panes.

View > Color Presets offers Classic, Calm, Flat, Pastel, High Contrast, and Custom. Presets change appearance while retaining the selected layout. Custom restores your saved adjustments. The same presets are available in the visualization context menu and the Graphs settings page. Graph backgrounds and automatic grid colors adapt to light and dark modes.

Largest, Duplicate, and Search Tabs

Tab	What it is for
Largest Files	Quickly inspect the largest individual files from the scan.
Duplicate Files	Review duplicate-content groups created during a duplicate scan.
Search Results	Review files and folders found by Edit > Search or an extension-list search.

These tabs use the same selection, sorting, context menu, and cleanup behavior as the main file tree where applicable. See Search, Filters, and Duplicates for searching and duplicate detection.

Search results include logical and physical size totals. When a matching folder contains matching descendants, these totals count the subtree only once. Optional sparse hashing labels sampled matches as Probable duplicates.

File Watcher

Choose Tools > Start File Watcher to monitor the scanned targets. The tab lists event paths, timestamps, operations, and logical sizes for created, deleted, modified, and renamed items. Renames have old-name and new-name entries. Refresh the scan separately when you need updated disk-usage totals.

The toolbar shows watcher controls while the File Watcher tab is active:

• Start resumes monitoring; Pause stops monitoring while keeping the recorded history.
• Autoscroll keeps the most recent event visible and is enabled by default.
• Clear removes the recorded history without deleting files.

Turning off Tools > Start File Watcher hides the tab, stops monitoring, and clears its history. Events that occur while monitoring is paused are not recorded.

The toolbar's Path filter accepts a case-insensitive regular expression, such as \.log$. It filters both recorded and incoming events without discarding hidden history. Clear the field or press Esc to show all events again. An invalid expression gets a red border and leaves the last valid filter in effect.

Permissions

Tools > Scan Permissions scans permissions after the file scan completes. The Permissions tab shows item paths, accounts, allow/deny access, summarized rights, scope (Applies To), and inheritance status. Root items include inherited permission entries; deeper items list explicit entries, avoiding repeated inherited permissions throughout the tree. The Inherited column indicates whether inheritance is enabled for the item.

Use Options > Settings > Permissions to highlight matching accounts and rights or exclude account names from permission scans. Export the results with File > Save Permissions To CSV/JSON. This is a permission-entry report; it does not calculate a particular user's effective access through all group memberships.

Storage Analytics

Tools > Storage Analytics opens a dashboard for the completed scan. It groups files into Hot, Cool, Cold, and Archive tiers using their last-change age and logical size.

Set age thresholds, monthly costs, and a size unit in Parameters, then choose Recalculate. The dashboard compares keeping everything in the hot tier with the configured tiered costs and shows file counts, capacity, and estimated monthly savings. Enter costs appropriate to your storage; the calculation does not move files or configure a storage service.