Windows 7 Explorer: how to show total size of all files in current folder

windows 7windows-explorer

In Windows XP Explorer one can turn on Status Bar which shows, among other things, the total size of all the files in the current folder, or if the cumulative size of the selected files. How do I get the same at-a-glance information in Windows 7?

Selecting files doesn't count as it stops after 15 files, and it's rare that I'm concerned about total size with that few files (it's pretty easy to estimate in my head).

thanks.

UPDATE: Information derived from the context menu (select > r-click > properties) isn't "at a glance", and not as smooth as selecting files and clicking the details link at the bottom in any case. Thank you for fleshing out more of the available routes though.

Yes Q19232 is similar to this one, though it is not a duplicate. That question is about looking for easy free-space on disk stats and this one is easy used-space by contents of this folder stats.

The answer for both is the same though. You can't! Hopefully someone will figure how to get this lost feature back with a shell extension or something.

Best Answer

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

Apparently there isn't an easy way, which is why the above freeware program was developed

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Alternate data streams

Your source files might have NTFS Alternate data streams. If your backup/synchronization software is not aware of them, they won't be copied to the target. There are many tools that can display them, and since Windows Vista you can do dir /r, which displays not only files but their alternate data streams as well.

Different filesystem cluster size

Disk space taken up by a file is rounded up, as a file takes a whole number of filesystem clusters. E.g. if your file's size is 3000 bytes, and filesystem cluster size is 4K, then the file will take 4K exactly. If your two filesystems use different cluster size, then amount of disk space wasted in this manner will be different.

Other rarely-used NTFS features

NTFS has several other features which may or may not be supported by your backup software:

Compression. If compressed files are uncompressed during copying, they will take more space.
Sparse files: Special care must be taken when copying these, otherwise they will "explode", e.g. take much more space and not be sparese anymore.
Reparse points, hard links, and many other features that can confuse your backup software.

Conslusion

Don't rely on filesystem totals. Use some kind of auditing to make sure your files are copied properly. For example, you may try md5deep to calculate hashes and compare files.

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