Using PowerShell To List Folders And Sizes

One of the things I run into regularly when dealing with storage is needing to know the sizes of folders in a directory. For example, if something filled up a drive over night, and you have 50 directories on that drive, which one did it?

Thankfully, PowerShell makes it easy to list out all of the folders in a directory, and calculate the size of the contents in each folder. Just run the below script, and change the $startDirectory path to the directory you want to check.


#gets the size of every directory under the $startDirectory directory
#can sometimes be a little slow if a directory has a lot of folders in it
$startDirectory = 'E:\MSSQL\Backups\'

#gets a list of folders under the $startDirectory directory
$directoryItems = Get-ChildItem $startDirectory | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $true} | Sort-Object

#loops throught he list, calculating the size of each directory
foreach ($i in $directoryItems)
{
    $subFolderItems = Get-ChildItem $i.FullName -recurse -force | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $false} | Measure-Object -property Length -sum | Select-Object Sum
    $i.FullName + " -- " + "{0:N2}" -f ($subFolderItems.sum / 1GB) + " GB"
}

#gets the size of every directory under the $startDirectory directory

#can sometimes be a little slow if a directory has a lot of folders in it

$startDirectory = 'E:\MSSQL\Backups\'

#gets a list of folders under the $startDirectory directory

$directoryItems = Get-ChildItem $startDirectory | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $true} | Sort-Object

#loops throught he list, calculating the size of each directory

foreach ($i in $directoryItems)

{

$subFolderItems = Get-ChildItem $i.FullName -recurse -force | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $false} | Measure-Object -property Length -sum | Select-Object Sum

$i.FullName + " -- " + "{0:N2}" -f ($subFolderItems.sum / 1GB) + " GB"

}

This nice thing about this script is that it also works on network paths (providing you have appropriate permissions). To get the file sizes on a network share, simply change the $startDirectory path to the share you want to check.


$startDirectory = '\\sharename\dir1\dir2\'

$startDirectory = '\\sharename\dir1\dir2\'

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7 thoughts on “Using PowerShell To List Folders And Sizes”

sageofwestcott April 14, 2020 Reply

Very useful. Thank you!
sageofwestcott April 14, 2020 Reply

In case it’s of any use to somebody, I tweaked your code to show both the size of the directories and the associated file count:

foreach ($i in $directoryItems)
{
$fcount = (get-childitem “$startDirectory$i” | measure-object ).count
$subFolderItems = Get-ChildItem $i.FullName -recurse -force | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $false} | Measure-Object -property Length -sum | Select-Object Sum
$i.FullName + ” Size: ” + “{0:N2}” -f ($subFolderItems.sum / 1GB) + ” GB ” + ” Filecount: ” + $fcount
}
- Eric Cobb Post authorApril 15, 2020 Reply
  
  Nice! Thanks!
- kitz1124 September 2, 2020 Reply
  
  Thanks for this, really helpful.
  
  But is there a way to add lastwritetime in the script?
  - Eric Cobb Post authorSeptember 3, 2020 Reply
    
    Yes, Get-ChildItem can list the LastWriteTime of a file:
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/get-childitem?view=powershell-7
bblack August 5, 2020 Reply

Great post. Thanks !
Moses April 27, 2021 Reply

Thanks, you saved my time