If you want to check hard drive usage or see what program is using the hard drive (external hard drive), you can check the 3 ways in this tutorial. MiniTool software provides professional free hard drive partition manager helping you manage partitions, analyze hard drive space, test hard drive speed, etc. MiniTool also offers free data recovery software, system backup and restore software, and more.
How to check hard drive usage or find out what programs are using the hard drive in Windows 10? This post offers 3 ways to help you figure it out.
Way 1. Check Hard Drive Usage via Task Manager
- You can press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Windows 10 Task Manager.
- Tap Process tab and you can see all running processes in your Windows 10 system.
- In the Disk usage column, you can check what program is using your hard disk drive, and the disk usage rate of each program. (Related: 12 Tips for 100% Disk Usage Windows 10)
Way 2. Check Hard Disk Usage via Windows Resource Monitor
- You can press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager.
- Then you can click Performance tab, and click Open Resource Monitor.
- Then you can click Disk tab in Resource Monitor window, and you can see which programs and processes are using your hard drive, and which disks and which files they are accessing.
Way 3. MiniTool Partition Wizard Helps Analyze Disk Drive Space
If you want to find out what is taking up most space on Windows 10, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to analyze hard drive space, and find out what files and folders occupy the most space of your hard disk.
MiniTool Partition Wizard is a professional free hard drive partition manager for Windows 10. You can use it to create/resize/extend/format/wipe/convert hard drive partitions.
It also provides a Space Analyzer feature allowing you to see which file is taking up too much space and then you can delete unnecessary files to free up disk space.
You can also use its Check File System and Surface Test functions to check and fix hard disk errors.
Test hard drive speed, copy disk, migrate Windows 10 OS and more are also supported.
You can download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard, and check the easy guide below for how to check hard disk drive usage in Windows 10.
Step 1. Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard to enter into its main interface.
Step 2. Next you can click Space Analyzer module at the top to open Space Usage Analyzer window.
Step 3. Then you can choose a hard drive partition and click Scan button. MiniTool Partition Wizard will start automatically analyzing disk space usage of the selected partition.
Step 4. After the scan process completes, you can check all the files in the disk partition by Tree View, File View or Folder View.
You can see the disk usage percentage, file size, number of items in a particular folder, and more. You can click each category tab to display all items in descending or ascending order. You can also right-click any unnecessary folder and select Delete to delete it directly from your hard disk to release more disk space.
If you want to know what program is using external hard drive becuase you can’t eject it, you can check: Can’t Eject External Hard Drive Windows 10? Fixed with 5 Tips.