Stepwise Guide: How to Find Large Files on Windows 11/10/8/7

How do I find large files taking up space on Windows 11?

Are you worried about your PC running 100% usage on Windows 11? Are you trying to clean up your computer to free up storage space, and uninstall unused applications but still get warned that you are about to run out of disk space and your computer continues to run slowly? Usually, you will find this is not enough. In fact, you can also delete large files to save more space on your computer.

When your PC is running for a long time, the disk storage space will be filled up with different size files, thus the computer will run slower and slower. These files include temporary files, expired files, invalid files, and a host of junk files. They often take up a lot of space, but are often overlooked by users due to their hidden location. But how to find large files on Windows 11/10/8/7?

Don't worry, from this page, you can grab 2 easy ways to let Windows 11 find large files and then delete them to free up space on Windows 11. If these large files are too important to delete, then you can choose to move them to other secure places with the recommended best freeware. Just keep reading to gain more details about it.

How to find large files on Windows 11/10/8/7 easily

If you can't find the location of large hidden files on Windows, don't panic, this article provides detailed steps on how to find the biggest files on your PC on Windows 11/10/8/7. You can learn how to show folder size in Windows 11 and how to sort the files with ease.

To achieve this task, you can use Windows File Explorer, execute commands at Command Prompt, or by using free third-party software. After finding large files, you can move them to other paths or delete them to free up your space and make your system as smooth as before. Let’s get started.

👉 Way 1. Search for large files using File Explorer
👉 Way 2. Find large files via Command Prompt
👉 Best freeware to backup Windows 11 large files to free up disk space🔥

Way 1. Search for large files using File Explorer

File Explorer is a resource management tool provided by Windows that can be used to view all the resources of this computer, allowing us to know more clearly and intuitively the files and folders of the computer. At the same time, it can help you manage files of different sizes and perform various operations on them such as: opening, copying, moving, deleting, etc.

1. Press Windows + E to open File Explorer. After the window pops up, click View at the top menu, then go to Show > Hidden items from the list to make the hidden files viewable.

2. Locate to This PC, or go to the specific folders you want to search for large files.

3. Type * (an asterisk) in the search bar, which will display all the files on your PC. Then go to the Search tab and click the Size option to filter the results by large files only.

4. From the drop-down list, it will sort folders by size on Windows 11 thus you can select Large (128 MB - 1 GB), Huge (1 - 4 GB), or Gigantic (>4 GB) files depending on your real needs.

Alternatively, if you know the target files size, you can choose to locate the files by typing size: >1GB (for example) in the search field at the top right corner.

5. Once you find the large files, you can choose to delete them that you don't need in the search results to free up disk storage space.

This way, you can search for your files based on the size of the files in a specific folder or throughout your Windows 11 system.

Way 2. Find large files via Command Prompt

Windows Command Prompt is a powerful built-in tool that you can use to have it perform tasks. For example, repair Windows 11 using Command Prompt, troubleshoot system problems, run programs, or configure settings by typing different commands. Likewise, it can help you find large files on your computer and delete them with a command.

However, this method is more complicated and requires some background knowledge of computers. If you are a computer novice, then this method is not recommended for you. The specific steps are as follows.

1. Search cmd in the Search box, select Command Prompt, and then Run as administrator to open the window.

2. Type cd C:\ and press Enter to search the entire C drive. Continuously, type the following command: forfiles /S /M * /C "cmd /c if @fsize size(bytes) echo @path > largefiles.txt". You must replace the size(bytes) command with the specific file size you are looking for, which should be in bytes (B). (1 KB = 1024 B, 1 MB = 1,048,576 B, 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 B)

For example, if you want to find large files as 1 GB (1,073,741,824 B), you should input the command: forfiles /S /M * /C "cmd /c if @fsize GEQ 1073741824 echo @path > LargeFilesList.txt", and press Enter to run the command.

3. Then it will create a folder named "LargeFilesList". You can go to File Explorer and open this folder to delete files and free up local disk space.

Best freeware to backup Windows 11 large files to free up disk space

That's all about how to find the largest files on PC  in windows 11. If these large files you find that take up huge memory are too important to delete, you may consider storing them in a safe location before deleting the source files on your computer. This way you can keep them safe and still keep your PC as smooth as before.

To enable that, the best free backup software - AOMEI Backupper Standard can do you a big favor. It can support you to backup files/folders, system, disks, and partitions to multiple locations such as internal/external hard drives, NAS devices, USB drives, clouds, etc. It has other excellent features shown below:

◈It supports you to set up automatic backup tasks on a daily, weekly, monthly, etc. basis, thus any changed files won't be missing.
◈To save disk space and backup time, you are able to create incremental and differential backup to backup only changed data. (Differential backup is accessible in the Pro version)
◈This free edition supports Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11, XP, Vista, etc. AOMEI Backupper Server is more suitable for you if you are a server user.

Moving on, you can follow the step-by-step tutorial to make a backup of the large files on your computer. If your target path is an external device, just insert it on your PC in advance.

1. Have this free backup software downloaded and installed on your PC. After launching it, click Backup then File Backup. Also, if you want to backup Windows 11 to Synology NAS, you can choose System Backup instead.

2. Click Add File or Add Folder to select the large items that you want to back up.

3. Click the inverted triangle at the right edge of the second bar and choose a destination path for your file backup.

Note: Optionally, you can backup these files to cloud drives such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. You can also backup files to AOMEI Cloud directly if you have an AOMEI account. And it will offer you 1TB of free cloud storage in 15 days. To use this feature, just select Cloud Backup in step 1.

4. Confirm all your settings and click Start Backup to perform large files backup.

✍ Before you click Start Backup, you can customize your backup settings:
➤ Options: You can write comments to distinguish the backup tasks, compress or split the backup image file as well as enable email notification.
➤ Schedule Backup: This software allows you to backup files with fixed intervals, including Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Event triggers, and USB plug in.

➤ Backup Scheme (paid): To save disk space, you can click Enable Automatic Backup Cleanup feature. It will help you delete older backups automatically.

Once you have finished backing up large files, you can delete the files on the original disk to free up computer storage space. In addition, with this file backup image, you will not worry about unpredictable failures resulting in the loss of critical data.

Final words

Now you know how to find large files on Windows 11 using File Explorer and Command Prompt. This is an easy task to complete with just several steps. Once you find the file and folder size on Windows 11 are too large and take up huge storage space, you can delete them or apply the best free file backup software to move them elsewhere so that your computer disk space will be freed up.

With AOMEI Backupper, you can save disk space not only by using incremental and differential backup to backup only changed files, but also by enabling the automatic backup cleanup feature to delete old backups. Moreover, as the best free Windows 11 USB creator, you can use it to create a bootable media to do a system update, install Windows 11 on a new computer, or when your computer has a system failure.