Windows · External Drives
2 TB of things
you can’t identify.
An external drive is where files go when you have not decided what to do with them. Backups from a laptop you no longer own. A folder called old-pc copied wholesale in 2022. Four versions of a video export. Then one day it is full, and Explorer will tell you a folder’s size one folder at a time, slowly.
VaultSort for Windows is in beta. Free to try, no account required.
Why cleaning one is harder than it should be
Explorer will not tell you where the space went
Right-clicking a folder for its size works, one folder at a time, and 2 TB is not a folder-at-a-time problem. Without size by directory, sorted, you are guessing — and deleting from an unmeasured drive is how people remove the only copy of something.
Whole-machine copies are the biggest and the most dangerous
The old-pc folder, or a Users directory copied off a machine before it was wiped. Usually the single largest consumer on the drive, and the one you cannot delete wholesale, because somewhere inside is the thing you kept it for.
The drive has its own Recycle Bin, and you have forgotten it
Deleting from an external drive in Explorer moves the file into a hidden $RECYCLE.BIN on that drive, still using the space. People who delete and then unplug leave gigabytes behind and never see them again.
Formatting it before you hand it on does not erase it
A quick format writes a fresh index and leaves your data in place, recoverable with free software. Three seconds is the giveaway — writing a 2 TB drive takes longer than three seconds.
What VaultSort does with it
Size by folder, in one look
A storage breakdown that turns 2 TB into three folders and some noise. Almost always the top three hold most of the drive, and once you can see that, the decisions make themselves.
The large files, listed
Video exports, disk images, ISOs and archives, ranked by what they are costing you. The fastest gigabytes to recover are usually a dozen files rather than a thousand.
Duplicates matched against your current machine
Content-based matching is what makes an old whole-machine copy tractable: most of it is already on your laptop, and what is genuinely unique turns out to be a handful of folders. Nothing is deleted by default — duplicates move to a folder you nominate.
BitLocker status, per volume
You can see which volumes on the drive are encrypted before deciding what to do with them. This is one of the places the Windows build is ahead of the Mac one, where the system tool cannot report encryption for external drives at all.
Free-space shredding, for a drive that is staying
Overwrites unallocated space so files deleted from the drive long ago cannot be recovered from what was left behind. Run to completion on a 62 GB volume.
Whole-drive erase, for a drive that is leaving
With honest timing: a single pass over a 62 GB USB drive took 1 hour 10 minutes, three passes 3 hours 29 minutes. Followed by TRIM on flash, which works with the controller rather than against it.
What it does not do yet
- — Erasing a single volume on a multi-partition removable drive is refused up front, because it cannot be done safely on that layout. The whole-disk alternative is offered instead.
- — System-level cleanup is partial on Windows compared with the macOS build. The user-level cleaner is the part exercised end to end on real hardware, and it is the part that matters on an external drive anyway.
- — Scanning over USB is bounded by the drive, not the software. A full hash pass across a nearly full 2 TB spinning disk is a long job — start it and leave it.
- — An external drive is not a backup. Nothing here changes that, and a drive in a drawer is a single copy of everything on it.
Questions people ask
What order should I do this in?
Measure first. Then deduplicate against your current machine, then delete the obvious categories, then empty that drive’s Recycle Bin while it is still connected. Erase last, and only if the drive is leaving.
Can I clean a drive formatted on a Mac?
Windows can read exFAT and FAT32 drives without help, and those are what most cross-platform external drives use. An HFS+ or APFS drive needs third-party support to mount before any tool, VaultSort included, can see it.
Is it safe to delete System Volume Information?
Not by hand. It holds restore points and indexing data for that drive. Turn off System Protection for the drive if you do not want it, and let Windows clean up after itself.
The drive is going back to work / being sold. What do I run?
A whole-drive erase, not a format, and budget the time — roughly one full write of the device per pass. If it is flash, follow with TRIM. If the volume was BitLocker-encrypted, destroying the key is far quicker than overwriting the disk.
Try it on your own files
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