Folder size display in Windows 7 and Vista

Question

Has anyone found a way to display every folder size as a coloumn in Windows Explorer?

In XP it used to be possible with an add-on called folder size but Microsoft removed the API for it in Vista.

Answer 1

As far as I know it's not possible. This is an explanation of why:

"Why start up another program to see folder sizes, when they should just be right there, in Explorer, all the time?"

The same reason \\ does not autocomplete to all the computers on the network: Because it would destroy corporate networks.

Showing folder sizes "all the time" means that when you open, say, the root of a large server, Explorer would start running around recursively enumerating every single directory on the server in order to compute the folder sizes. One person doing this to a server is bad enough. Imagine if hundreds of people did it simultaneously: The server would be hammered continously.

Answer 2

You can't see it in an integrated way, but as an alternative you could use TreeSize Free.

TreeSize Free can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders. You can expand this folder in Explorer-like style and you will see the size of every subfolder. All results can also be drilled down to the file level. Scanning is done in a thread, so you can already see results while TreeSize Free is working. The Explorer context menu is supported within TreeSize, as well as the usual drag & drop operations.