Get Folder Size from Windows Command Line

Question

Is it possible in Windows to get a folder's size from the command line without using any 3rd party tool?

I want the same result as you would get when right clicking the folder in the windows explorer → properties.

Solution 1

You can just add up sizes recursively (the following is a batch file):

@echo off
set size=0
for /r %%x in (folder\*) do set /a size+=%%~zx
echo %size% Bytes

However, this has several problems because cmd is limited to 32-bit signed integer arithmetic. So it will get sizes above 2 GiB wrong¹. Furthermore it will likely count symlinks and junctions multiple times so it's at best an upper bound, not the true size (you'll have that problem with any tool, though).

An alternative is PowerShell:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Measure-Object -Sum Length

or shorter:

ls -r | measure -sum Length

If you want it prettier:

switch((ls -r|measure -sum Length).Sum) {
  {$_ -gt 1GB} {
    '{0:0.0} GiB' -f ($_/1GB)
    break
  }
  {$_ -gt 1MB} {
    '{0:0.0} MiB' -f ($_/1MB)
    break
  }
  {$_ -gt 1KB} {
    '{0:0.0} KiB' -f ($_/1KB)
    break
  }
  default { "$_ bytes" }
}

You can use this directly from cmd:

powershell -noprofile -command "ls -r|measure -sum Length"

---

¹ I do have a partially-finished bignum library in batch files somewhere which at least gets arbitrary-precision integer addition right. I should really release it, I guess :-)

Solution 2

There is a built-in Windows tool for that:

dir /s 'FolderName'

This will print a lot of unnecessary information but the end will be the folder size like this:

 Total Files Listed:
       12468 File(s)    182,236,556 bytes

If you need to include hidden folders add /a.

Solution 3

Oneliner:

powershell -command "$fso = new-object -com Scripting.FileSystemObject; gci -Directory | select @{l='Size'; e={$fso.GetFolder($_.FullName).Size}},FullName | sort Size -Descending | ft @{l='Size [MB]'; e={'{0:N2}    ' -f ($_.Size / 1MB)}},FullName"

Same but Powershell only:

$fso = new-object -com Scripting.FileSystemObject
gci -Directory `
  | select @{l='Size'; e={$fso.GetFolder($_.FullName).Size}},FullName `
  | sort Size -Descending `
  | ft @{l='Size [MB]'; e={'{0:N2}    ' -f ($_.Size / 1MB)}},FullName

This should produce the following result:

Size [MB]  FullName
---------  --------
580,08     C:\my\Tools\mongo
434,65     C:\my\Tools\Cmder
421,64     C:\my\Tools\mingw64
247,10     C:\my\Tools\dotnet-rc4
218,12     C:\my\Tools\ResharperCLT
200,44     C:\my\Tools\git
156,07     C:\my\Tools\dotnet
140,67     C:\my\Tools\vscode
97,33      C:\my\Tools\apache-jmeter-3.1
54,39      C:\my\Tools\mongoadmin
47,89      C:\my\Tools\Python27
35,22      C:\my\Tools\robomongo

Solution 4

I suggest to download utility DU from the Sysinternals Suite provided by Microsoft at this link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896651

usage: du [-c] [-l <levels> | -n | -v] [-u] [-q] <directory>
   -c     Print output as CSV.
   -l     Specify subdirectory depth of information (default is all levels).
   -n     Do not recurse.
   -q     Quiet (no banner).
   -u     Count each instance of a hardlinked file.
   -v     Show size (in KB) of intermediate directories.
C:\SysInternals>du -n d:\temp
Du v1.4 - report directory disk usage
Copyright (C) 2005-2011 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
Files:        26
Directories:  14
Size:         28.873.005 bytes
Size on disk: 29.024.256 bytes

While you are at it, take a look at the other utilities. They are a life-saver for every Windows Professional

Solution 5

If you have git installed in your computer (getting more and more common) just open MINGW32 and type: du folder

View more solutions

Comments

[Rich]

That's hardly "without any 3rd-party tool", I guess.

[Steve]

Oh right, but it thought that family should not be considered '3rd party'.

[Rich]

Well, granted, but it's still an additional download (or using \\live.sysinternals.com if that still exists). I wholeheartedly agree though, that all the sysinternals tools should be included by default. Although for many uses PowerShell is a quite worthy replacement.

[Rich]

If you just need du then Cygwin is way overkill. Just go with GnuWin32.

[Steve]

+1 I was just wandering in the get-help * output to find something like that.

[Illizian]

Indeed it is overkill, but it's also awesome. +1 for your post above @joey (haven't got the rep to do it literally :( )

[Rich]

Steve, in my eyes PowerShell is way more Unix-y than Unix in that most core commands are really orthogonal. In Unix du gives directory size but all it's doing is walking the tree and summing up. Something that can be very elegantly expressed in a pipeline like here :-). So for PowerShell I usually look for how you can decompose the high-level goal into suitable lower-level operations.

[Rich]

In my humble opinion Cygwin may be useful to some but it's far from awesome and rather horrible. But I guess Unix users say the same about Wine.

[Illizian]

"wine" - shudder, I use Cygwin on my development laptop because the battery life is appalling under linux and it's not convenient to run a VM on it. It takes some setting up, but Cygwin is brilliant for those among us who miss the nix shell in Windows, personally I don't like Powershell I may have to check GnuWin out though. Thanks @Joey.

[John Homer]

Did someone say Powershell? Try the following: "{0:N2}" -f ((Get-ChildItem C:\Temp -Recurse | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum).Sum / 1MB) + " MB"

[garg]

It does not seem to return the current result for the home directory of a user. In one case, if I right click on a home folder and get properties, I see ~200 MB. If I do ls -r <dir path> | measure -s length then I see 6 megs (in bytes)

[garg]

I see, it seems to ignore hidden folders that way. ls -force -r works if I want to include hidden folders as well.

[elady]

Thanks, it works for me with folders which smaller than 1GB, but for example, I have a folder of 3,976,317,115 bytes (3.70GB), and the script return to me this string ") 932", do you know why?

[Harry Johnston]

For reference, the Sysinternals du (per Steve's answer) is smart enough not to iterate into junction points, etc., and even handles hardlinks properly.

[IT researcher]

folder\* is not working for me the size of the folder that i put in the place shows 0 bytes, Is there any solution?

[Tatarin]

This is a bad and poor answer. What is the command line or code?

[Linga]

@ITresearcher I'm also getting 0 as well. I tried powershell -noprofile -command "ls -r|measure -s Length" and works fine

[zumalifeguard]

A slightly better looking version: powershell -noprofile -command "'{0:N0}' -f (ls -r|measure -s Length).Sum"

[Oran D. Lord]

This is the most elegant solution if you don't require an integer return value. Note: the '/a' switch will include hidden and system files in the total size.

[dkellner]

I suggest you all to download whatever Mark Russinovich develops :) I keep seeing this name whenever I find a tool saving my life.

[athos]

is there a way to add a command line parameter for the folder?

[Rich]

@athos: Yes, there is.

[Rich]

@athos: Use %1 in place of folder in the batch file, or add a parameter to the PowerShell script and add that as an argument to Get-ChildItem. But perhaps such things are better asked as a separate question if you have trouble with that part (as it has no relation to the original question here).

[athos]

just for those who might enter, these are the ways to query a folder: in powerscript: Get-ChildItem -Path c:\temp -Recurse | Measure-Object -Sum Length, in cmd: powershell -noprofile -command "'{0:N0}' -f (ls c:\temp -r|measure -s Length).Sum"

[Disillusioned]

This utility (v1.61) has a permission problem resulting in the size of some files not being included. This makes the tool somewhat unreliable unless using an admin elevated console. NOTE: Files and sizes are listed with dir command. (I had thought it might be a file size issue due to the problem directory containing database files with many of them > 2GB.)

[Raunak Thomas]

Is there a way to show all the files and size in Mb in the base folder as well? In this case `C:\my\Tools`

[Raunak Thomas]

Plus it breaks when there are lots of folders (For example in the C: drive)

[David Ferenczy Rogožan]

I guess it's not possible to print file sizes in some more useful units, like kB or MB, right?

[andrew pate]

Works for me. Useful if your on a headless server.

[Alexander Anufriev]

New version released! github.com/aleksaan/diskusage Improvments: 1) correct work with symlink's sizes 2) orevall info about analyzed objects

[Tilo]

0.00 C:\Windows can I optimize this for all folder, tried already run as admin

[vard]

You can use the following command du -h -d 1 folder | sort -h if you want human readable size, one level of subdirectories only, and sort by size.

[Sylwester Zarębski]

It will quit with error on first directory with no access. It should skip it, or give only warning.

[julesverne]

For anyone worried Robocopy will move files.. don't. the /l option only lists. In addition, Robocopy is not 3rd party, Robocopy is installed in Windows by default from Vista up, XP you need to install it.

[Eldad Assis]

Thanks for the addition. Glad to see this thread still attracting attention ;-) Might want to add how to install robocopy (great tool!).

[sean.net]

this is good but it truncates my component folder names. what is the command to display them entirely?

[frizik]

@sean.net do you mean it ends with "..." in case of long folders? That's how ft (Format-Table) works. You can try fl instead (Format-List)

[Alexander Anufriev]

Version 2.0.2 released! github.com/aleksaan/diskusage/releases/tag/v2.0.2 - Configuration file instead inline parameters - Simple usage mode (copy diskusage executable to any folder, run it and get results) - Correct results output (correct end of line symbol win/unix) - Save results to file or get it in console mode (option 'tofile')

[curropar]

Simple and elegant! My version: $FolderList = Get-ChildItem -Directory -Force; $data = foreach ($folder in $FolderList) { set-location $folder.FullName; $size = Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Force | Measure-Object -Sum Length; $size | select @{n="Path"; e={$folder.Fullname}}, @{n="FileCount"; e={$_.count}}, @{n="Size"; e={$_.Sum}} } This will provide objects (more Powershell-ish), 'FileCount' and 'Size' are integers (so you can process them later, if needed), and 'Size' is in bytes, but you could easily convert it to GB (or the unit you want) with $Data.Size / 1GB.

[curropar]

Or a one-liner: $Data = dir -Directory -Force | %{ $CurrentPath = $_.FullName; Get-ChildItem $CurrentPath -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Measure-Object -Sum Length | select @{n="Path"; e={$CurrentPath}}, @{n="FileCount"; e={$_.count}}, @{n="Size"; e={$_.Sum}} }

[Intrastellar Explorer]

I found I was hitting a bunch of errors with very deep file structures, and then learned of Windows 260 char path limit. Changing registry to allow long file paths fixed this for me. howtogeek.com/266621/…

[user2924019]

Double quotes instead of single quotes.

[aeracode]

Please, make note that you are an author. (From stackoverflow.com/help/promotion: "However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers.")

[BenderBoy]

I like this one best, but isn't the set-location unnecessary? You can just go Get-ChildItem $folder.FullName, that way you come out the other side without the current directory changing underneath you.

[Ryan Lee]

Thanks @BenderBoy. It's better to remove set-location and use Get-ChildItem $folder.FullName directly.

[Serge N]

@ITresearcher The format of the for command is incorrect, it should be this: for /r folder %%x in (*) do set /a size+=%%~zx

[Alexander Anufriev]

Yes, I am author of github.com/aleksaan/diskusage program

[Alexander Anufriev]

Version 2.1.0 has been released. github.com/aleksaan/diskusage/releases/tag/v2.1.0 - memory consumpion optimization - reducing time of analysis - bug fixing

[Alexander Anufriev]

Version 2.2.0 has been released.github.com/aleksaan/diskusage/releases/tag/v2.2.0 - more 5 times faster now!

[jeyko]

only works if i rearrange the command here - dir 'FolderName'/s

[Eldad Assis]

Right, but this is not windows native in 2012 ;-) +1 anyway for the idea

[user1016274]

I posted the original solution 4 years earlier here on SO. Using robocopy by far is the fastest solution.

[Admin]

this gives the size of every file - it's still spinning after 5 minutes when the powershell script gave me the totals in about 2 seconds

[Alexander Anufriev]

Version 2.8.0 github.com/aleksaan/diskusage was released. Duck has been born!