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Cool Tool: ExplorerXP 1.06

ExplorerXP is a free Windows Explorer replacement that has some really useful features:

• It shows the total size of each folder and its sub folders


• You can assign your own keyboard shortcuts to all menu commands


• Tabbed interface instead of many open windows. You can drag and drop files and directories between the tabs


• Use wildcards to select of files or select similar file names


• Multiple rename


• Merge and split files

I particularly like the total folder size feature. It calculates the directory sizes in the background so it does not block the user interface. This is important as it takes a while to calculate the directory sizes after you have booted if you have a large disk. The folder size calculation is on my default but you can turn it of under File, Settings.

There are more "advanced" disk analyzers out there so I did a quick comparison of the leading ones on my Win2k3 machine. I ran all test 3 times and ignored as the first run takes forever until Windows has loaded the file system in cache.

SpaceMonger
This is without a doubt the fastest of the disk analyzers. At 6 seconds it analyzed the disk space usage in half the time of the other tools. It does one thing, and it does it well: it gives a graphical representation of the disk usage. It does not do anything else though as you can't get a directory listing or move files to other drives.

WinDirStat
WinDirStat is the slowest of the bunch at 16 seconds. The WinDirStat gives you the best of both worlds: a normal text listing on top and a graphical representation below.

It shows you where the space has gone and you can delete files but you cannot move files or directories.

ExplorerXP
Slightly faster than WinDirStat at 14 seconds as it only presents a list of files and directories.

Conclusion
The graphics of the other space analyzers are neat but they do not solve the disk space problem. ExplorerXP allows me to sort on the Size column which is all I need to find out where the disk space went, and it has all the tools I need to free up the disk space. Add the other features and it is one cool tool.

ExplorerXP discovered via [jkOnTheRun]