How to Find Out How Many Files Are on Your Computer

Techwalla may earn compensation through affiliate links in this story. Learn more about our affiliate and product review process here.
You may be surprised at how many files are on your hard drive.

The hard drives in computers seem to get steadily larger year after year. In older computers, it was common to have only 30GB, or sometimes less, of hard drive space available. Today's computers have hard drives with over 500GB of space, and some have far more than that. If you have a large hard drive, you probably have so many files stored on it that you can't remember how many, or even where they all are. If you've ever wanted to know the exact number of files on your hard drive, a simple trick gives you the answer.

Advertisement

Step 1

Click on the "Start" button, then in the search bar, type "cmd."

Video of the Day

Step 2

Click "cmd.exe" when it appears in the results window. The command prompt opens.

Step 3

Type, excluding the quotation marks, "dir /s /a-d c:". Ensure that you've typed spaces between "dir," "/s," "/a-d" and "c:." If the spaces aren't there, this does not work.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Step 4

Hit "Enter." The computer scans all of the files on your hard drive. If you have a lot of files, this may take several minutes to complete.

Step 5

View the results, when the scan ends, under "Total Files Listed:" at the bottom of the page.

Video of the Day

Advertisement

Advertisement

references