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I am often doing some cleanup in hard drives and I always want to know the size of each Folder in a directory in Explorer.
Each time i need to run a dir to know the folder size. I noticed that there is that option in windows explorer but why does the size of thoses folders is never showing up?

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Thanks for your help

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  • I am not talking of any third party programs I think there must be a way whitout right clicking and going into propreties for every folder to know wich one has a large size, also dont want to run a cmd command everytime
    – Delbane
    Nov 5, 2013 at 18:09
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    As others have said here and in the links supplied in the question marked as a duplicate: You can't do it without a third party program. Nov 5, 2013 at 18:34

2 Answers 2

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That is intended behavior by Microsoft. There would be to much I/O disk access. every time you open a folder it would start calculating the sizes of the folders making for slower loading of windows. Imagine it trying to calculate the Windows folder. Basically It just isn't used so the system is faster.

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As @jmc302005 said, this simply isn't possible, and that's intentional.

Try this, it's an excellent way to get an overview of what's eating up you're space
WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics

Just run and it and look for the big blocks in the treemap, then go clean them up if you can and run it again to see the impact it's had, simple :)

EDIT
I think the reason the file size column exists is because the data is available on individual files, so a folder with files and folders in it would need the column there for the individual files.

As a result it would be a waste of time (and processing power) to program the function to not provide the column if there happens to be no files in the folder, only more folders. Especially considering the fact that you could add or remove files at any time.

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  • if it's impossible then why microsoft added the funtion when you look at folders? I am also running a raid 0 of 2 samsung 840 pro I think I would have the performance to do it. The only thing I see is that this option is only there to be used when there is files in the directory. There must be a way to get this working
    – Delbane
    Nov 5, 2013 at 16:23
  • Sorry, I've searched long and hard and found nothing (and been tearing my hair out asking the same questions) Hence why I use WinDirStat. Still, I’ve added an edit to my answer with what as see as the most likely reason for why this feature doesn’t show folder sizes.
    – CLockeWork
    Nov 5, 2013 at 16:30
  • Really there is no need for that function to work on folders when you can just right click them and get the size.
    – jmc302005
    Nov 5, 2013 at 18:52
  • @jmc302005 If there were no need to know folder sizes there wouldn't be utilities like WinDirStat. As you said correctly, Windows would start calculating recursively the sizes of all folders in view. Now imagine what would happen if two folders are symlinked with each other... Nov 6, 2013 at 0:45
  • Yes but when you browse explorer lets say to see wich folder is taking so much space well you have to right click every folder to know their size. There must be a way to do it in Explorer and not in CMD or powershell
    – Delbane
    Nov 6, 2013 at 0:46

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