Reference number: CH000369

Determining available hard drive space.

Issue:

Determining available hard drive space.

Reasons:

It may be necessary to determine the available hard disk drive space or capacity for any of the below reasons.

1. Determine if enough space is available to install software onto the hard drive.
2. Verify that enough space is available for the swap file.
3. Determine if programs or games need to be removed from your computer.

Solution:

To determine the available hard disk drive space will vary depending upon the operating system that is currently being used. Below is a listing of various operating systems and the methods of determining how much space is available in that operating system.

Windows Vista and 7 users
Windows 95, 98, NT 4.x, 2000, ME, and XP users
MS-DOS users
Windows 3.x and NT 3.x users
Linux and Unix users

Windows Vista and 7 users

1. Open the Computer Icon. In Computer you'll see each drive with a small percentage bar of how much disk space is being used as well as a description of how much is free and the total disk space. If you're wanting additional information right-click the drive and click Properties. Below is an example of what this looks like.

Windows 95, 98, NT 4.x, 2000, ME, and XP users

1. From the Windows desktop open My Computer
2. Within My Computer highlight and right-click the C: Drive or the drive you wish to determine the capacity or available space on the drive.
3. From the menu that appears after right-clicking the drive click Properties.
4. The Properties window will display the used space, free space, and the total capacity of the hard disk drive or other drive similar to what is shown below.

Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP users:

If you're running Windows 2000 or higher My Computer will also display the Total Size and Free Space for each of the drives in the main My Computer Windows. If you wish to display more information as well as a graph of available space follow the above steps.

In addition to the steps listed above you can also still view the available space through MS-DOS.

MS-DOS users

Open the MS-DOS prompt. Additional information about getting into the MS-DOS prompt can be found on document CHDOS.

To determine the available space on a hard disk drive using MS-DOS we recommend that the 'dir' command be used.

At the MS-DOS prompt type:

dir <press enter>

At the end of the directory listing you will see information similar to the below example.

  2 file (s)                         578 bytes
15 dir (s)               16,754.78 MB free

As you can see above the hard disk drive has over 16GB of free space. If you wish to see all files and how much space they are occupying type the below commands.

cd\
dir /s

The above command will list all files on your computer (except the hidden files) and give you the total amount of disk space they utilize as well as the free disk space.

See our dir command page and our cd command page for additional information about each of these commands. 

Windows 3.x and NT 3.x users

In Windows 3.x or Windows NT 3.x you can determine the available free space by highlighting the C: drive and on the status bar at the bottom of the screen see the available free space and total.

In addition to the steps listed above you can also still view the available space through MS-DOS.

Linux and Unix users

If you're running Linux / Unix or a variant see document CH000624 for additional information about determining available disk space on a drive.

Additional information:

• Additional information about regaining hard disk drive space can be found on document CH000528.
• For information about determining the size of one or more files see document CH000769.
• See document CH000879 for determining available space on a floppy diskette.