Install

Capacitra is a single self-contained .exe file. There is no installer, no setup wizard, no admin prompt required for installation.

1. Download Capacitra.exe from the download page.
2. Move the file anywhere on your machine, for example C:\Tools\Capacitra.exe or your Desktop.
3. Double-click to launch. That's it.

Optional: run as Administrator

Some Windows system folders (such as System Volume Information or other users' home directories) are only readable by an elevated process. To scan them, right-click Capacitra.exe and choose Run as administrator.

Run your first scan

1. From the address bar at the top, pick a drive from the dropdown (for example C:\), or click Browse… to scan a specific folder.
2. Press New Scan in the top-right corner of the window.
3. Watch the status bar at the bottom. The scan starts immediately and you can drill into the partial results while it runs.
4. When the scan finishes, the status icon turns green and the full results are loaded.

A typical 500 GB SSD finishes in 30 – 60 seconds. Network drives and slower disks take proportionally longer; you can press Esc at any time to cancel.

Reading the dashboard

The Overview tab shows the high-level picture:

• Disk usage hero, total disk capacity, used, free, and how much of the used portion Capacitra actually scanned. The numbers always add up to 100 %.
• Stat cards, total files, folders, file types and inaccessible items in your scan.
• Folder tree, Windows-Explorer-style tree with an inline blue bar showing each folder's share of the parent. Click a folder to drill down; the tree expands lazily so it stays responsive even on very deep trees.
• Top folders by size, the biggest 8 folders at the current level, ranked.

Treemap visualization

Switch to the Treemap tab to see the same data as a squarified treemap, every folder is a tile sized in proportion to its bytes.

• Hover a tile to see the full path and size in a tooltip.
• Click a tile to drill into that folder (the treemap re-renders with that folder as the new root).
• Use ↑ Up and ⌂ Root in the header to navigate back out.
• The synthetic Free space tile (blue) is always shown so you can see how much of the drive is empty. Inaccessible (red) appears when system files couldn't be read.

Find duplicates

From the sidebar, choose Duplicates after a scan completes, then press Find Duplicates. Capacitra first groups files by size, then verifies matching groups with a SHA-1 hash to avoid false positives.

The result list shows the wasted space for each duplicate group. Expand a group to see the actual paths, right-click any file to copy its path, open its location, or send it to the Recycle Bin.

Advanced filters

The filter box in the address bar accepts a small query language so you can narrow the tree without scrolling:

pdf                    → file or folder names containing "pdf"
*.mp4 size:>1gb        → MP4 files larger than 1 GB.log age:<7d           → log files modified in the last 7 days
size:>500mb size:<5gb   → files between 500 MB and 5 GB

Recognised tokens:

• *.ext or .ext: match a file extension.
• size:>100mb, size:<1gb units are b, kb, mb, gb, tb.
• age:>30d, age:<7d: units are d, w, mo, y.
• Anything else is treated as a name substring.

Export & snapshots

Capacitra produces clean reports of any scan:

• CSV: flat list of every path with size, type and modification time. Good for spreadsheets.
• HTML: single-file styled report with disk-usage chart, top-folders, file types and largest files. Print-friendly.
• PDF & Excel. same content as HTML but in printable / structured form (depending on your build).

Snapshots capture the entire scan tree to a compact .capsnap file. Load it later to view the same dashboard exactly as it was, or use Compare with snapshot to see which folders grew or shrank since.

Keyboard shortcuts

Troubleshooting

"Scanned size" is much less than the disk's "Used" value

That gap is the Inaccessible region typically System Volume Information, $Recycle.Bin, other users' profiles, and locked system files (pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys). Restart Capacitra with Run as administrator to scan most of them.

Scan feels slow on a network share

Network round-trips dominate scan time over the wire. Try a local cache or VPN-less connection. Adding the share to Settings → Excluded folder names skips it entirely.

The .exe is flagged by my antivirus

Some AV products treat unfamiliar single-file executables as suspicious. Capacitra is unsigned freeware; you can add an exception, or run the same code as a script if your team prefers. Email info@capacitra.com if you'd like a script bundle.

Treemap or Charts look blocky

Capacitra renders charts at the size of the visible panel. Resize the window or toggle the dashboard splitter, the tiles snap to the new layout. On very high-DPI displays, Windows scaling above 200% is supported.

Where are snapshots stored?

Snapshots are saved wherever you choose with the file dialog (typically Documents\Capacitra). They are plain files with the .capsnap extension and can be moved or archived freely.

← Back to home  ·  Email support