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Elucidisk

This uses a sunburst chart to visualize disk space usage on Windows.

It is modelled after Scanner, Diskitude, and other similar disk space viewers.

The name "Elucidisk" is a portmanteau of "elucidate" and "disk".

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What can it do?

  • Scans drives or folders to find the size used.
  • Shows the results in a sunburst chart.
  • The chart has several configurable options:
    • Use plain colors.
    • Use rainbow colors (based on angle in the sunburst).
    • Use heatmap colors (based on size).
    • Show/hide names of files and directories in the sunburst (if the name fits).
    • Show/hide free space for drives.
    • Use the actual compressed size for compressed files, instead of the uncompressed size.
    • Show arcs with proportional area (e.g. two arcs for 50 GB directories will have the same area, even if they are at different distances from the center).
    • Show size comparison bar when hovering over an arc (the comparison bars are always in the center ring, so their sizes are comparable even when Proportional Area is turned off).
  • Show combined summary chart for all local drives.
  • Right click on an arc for a context menu of available actions.
  • Right click elsewhere for a context menu of configurable options (or press Shift-F10 or Apps key).

Please feel free to open issues for suggestions, problem reports, or other feedback.

If you want to contribute, fork the repo and create a topic branch, and send a pull request for your topic branch. Also, consider opening an issue first and discussing the contribution you want to make.

Why was it created?

When viewing a sunburst chart of disk space usage, I want the free space on a disk to show up in the chart. The only sunburst disk space visualizer I could find that includes the free space is Scanner.

I also wanted a few improvements to the user interface, such as highlighting the arc under the mouse pointer and showing names of directories/files when the name fits in the arc.

I wanted to use the MIT license. Most disk space visualizers are either proprietary or use a "viral" version of GPL license.

So, I wrote my own.

It is written in C++ and uses DirectX for rendering.

Building Elucidisk

Elucidisk uses Premake to generate Visual Studio solutions. Note that Premake >= 5.0.0-beta1 is required.

  1. Cd to your clone of elucidisk.
  2. Run premake5.exe toolchain (where toolchain is one of Premake's actions - see premake5.exe --help).
  3. Build scripts will be generated in .build\toolchain. For example .build\vs2019\elucidisk.sln.
  4. Call your toolchain of choice (Visual Studio, msbuild.exe, etc).