How to Check Hard Drive Space

Hard drive is a non volatile storage device, used to store digital data. The first hard drive was made by IBM in 1956. Over the years, that we have been using the computer, there may come a time, when the hard drive may run out of space. If you want to install a new software, then it is better to know empty space on the hard drive, so that you are sure you will be able to install the software on the system. If you are indeed running out of space, you may want to know how to clean computer hard drive. Un-installing software, that are not required, will help you to have free some space on the hard drive. There are be some out there, who may want to know, the steps to find hard drive space just out of curiosity (well I am one of them). Whatever be the reason, checking hard drive space will not harm the system, but may prove to be helpful to you.

How to Check Hard Drive Space

... On Windows

There are a different ways to check the space available on the hard drive. Let's see the steps, you will have to take for the same.

• Click on "Start" located in the left hand corner.
• Then go to "My Computer" from the menu.
• Right click on the "Local Disk (C:)" icon.
• Then select "Properties" from the drop down menu, that appears.
• You will be able to see the "Used Space" and "Free Space". With this you will know the amount of space, you have used and the amount of space, that is available.
• Repeat the same on the other drives on your system as well.

In the other way to find empty hard drive space in Windows, the change is only in the initial steps. You will have to double on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop. There you will the see the hard drive, along with the partitions if any. Right click on the hard drive and select "Properties" from the drop down menu. With the window, that pops up, you will be able to see all information, along with a pie chart.

... On Mac

If you have a Mac, then the method to find hard drive space on Mac is different from the way it is done in Windows. Like is the case with Windows computer operating system, there are a couple of ways to doing the same in Mac as well. The easiest way is to open your hard drive folder from the desktop. When a window opens, see at the bottom of the status bar. You will see the status being displayed, about the amount of space available on the hard drive. Let's see the other way now.

• Go to System Profiler.
• Then click on the Apple icon located in the top left corner of the screen.
• Now click on "About This Mac".
• In the window, that appears, you will come across a button "More Info...".
• When the new window pops up, to go the Hardware tab and then to Serial-ATA tab.
• You will now be able to see information, about the available space on the hard drive, whether the hard drive is writable or not, type of file system, among other things.

... In Linux

Finding out the hard drive space on Linux and Unix is indeed easy. The command to use at the shell prompt is "$ df". It will display the amount of disk space available on the file system, which will also have each file name argument. If there is no file name available, then the space available on all currently mounted file systems will be displayed.

Now that you know the steps to find empty space on the hard drive, you will be free to install a number of software. If you are running out of space, then you can uninstall the software, which you do not require.