Disk space is a funny thing, no matter how big hard drives get we always managed to fill them up!

If you are not quite sure where all your hard drive space has disappeared to there is a useful disk usage visualisation tool by the name of OverDisk, which was in beta at version 0.11a (and is no longer under development), which lets you view your hard disk in a radial manner with drill down. It’s a shame the application is no longer under development as it offers a refreshingly different way of visualising your disk usage – and I am a big fan of data visualisation tools.

The first time you run the application you will need to perform a Rescan, by pressing F5 on the keyboard. Scanning can take some time on really large hard drives so be prepared for a bit of a wait.

OverDisk doesn’t automatically update its index based on drive activity so if you have been doing a fair bit of disk activity you will most likely need to perform a Rescan.

Once the scan is complete, however, you can immediately see the areas of your disk that are taking up the most space (the size of each unit displayed is proportional to the amount of space it takes up), and clicking on one of areas allows you to drill down further. Clicking on the middle grey area takes you back up a level of abstraction.

Other useful pieces of information available from the main screen include a folder and file count (total and current view), size of the space used up, the amount of space allocated and the amount of wasted space (based on allocation in cluster units).

You can flip the view to show the physical usage, logical usage, or just the wasted areas.

What is your favourite disk usage visualisation tool?