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Disk Usage in Windows 7

An interesting discussion of Windows disk space usage in the upcoming Windows 7 release:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/11/19/disk-space.aspx

FolderSizes v4.7 is Released

FolderSizes v4.7 is now available for download.

As I discussed in a recent blog entry, this new release provides a fascinating new way to view hierarchical folder structures - the folder map. We're extremely excited about this capability, as we believe this is a best-in-class implementation of a very modern data visualization technique known as treemapping.

Version 4.7 of FolderSizes also introduces a new license type - the personal edition license - designed specifically for home users (and priced accordingly at only $25.00 USD). There are a few functional limitations (described in detail here) in the personal edition of FolderSizes, and it cannot be used in any business or organizational environment. But for folks needing a disk space analysis tool for home / personal use, this new license type should be very welcome. In fact, users have been asking us for this for quite some time.

Additional information about v4.7 can found in the online release notes.

FolderSizes v4.7 BETA

The next release of FolderSizes (version 4.7) will contain a new feature that I'm really excited about. We're calling this new feature a Folder Map view, and it provides a graphical representation of a complete subfolder hierarchy within a limited amount of space.

Let's jump right to a screenshot (click it for a slightly clearer view):



This is a Folder Map visualization of my C:\Windows system directory. The entire subfolder hierarchy is shown as a series of nested rectangles, computed with a technique known as Treemapping. The larger the rectangle, the more storage space the corresponding folder is consuming.

This new visualization approach is interesting because it provides much greater depth than other graph types (such as bar and pie graphs) can reasonably achieve. It's almost impossible, for example, to show a hierarchy of 5,000 folders within a pie graph - the individual pie slices would be too small and cluttered to be useful. Bar graphs have a similar limitation in that thousands of entries would require lots of scrolling to view all the data they represent.

For the next couple of weeks, I'll be looking for BETA testers to try out this new feature. If you're interested, please contact me via email as soon as possible.

FolderSizes v4.6 is Released

Well, I wanted to write an attention-grabbing blog post for our FolderSizes v4.6 release because it is, in fact, a major step forward for our flagship disk space analysis product.

So my first instinct was to say that FolderSizes v4.6 is our most compelling, feature-rich release ever. But... then it occurred to me: "duh." Of course v4.6 is the best release ever - I mean, what else would we be doing - moving backwards? Taking features out? I don't think so.

Maybe I'll just tell you what we've been working on for FolderSizes v4.6. :-)

First and foremost, v4.6 contains a new integrated scheduling facility. With this tool, you can schedule the execution of any FolderSizes report type and export those results in a variety of formats. Here in our development labs, we've scheduled the generation of all of FolderSizes' various report types, exporting each of them (in HTML format) to a shared folder on our network (effectively building an archive of data storage reports that speed and simplify storage hotspot identification, as well as providing historical context).

The next major focus of FolderSizes v4.6 is performance. Nearly every feature has received a comprehensive performance and resource usage evaluation, and this has process resulted in:

• The introduction of a new file owner data lookup cache
• Numerous improvements to our folder analysis data caching technology
  
• A nearly 60% memory usage reduction in many file report scan scenarios
  
• Numerous performance boosts when scanning remote (network) paths
• New options that provide more granular control over scan-time performance
  

Some of these improvements might sound a bit technical and geeky - but believe me, they amount to a serious performance and resource usage improvement in v4.6.

There are tons of other improvements as well - improved visual theme switching, "filename only" duplicate file matching, a greatly improved duplicate file report HTML export format, a new "allocated" column in several of the file reporting detail views, and much more. We also threw in a handful of bug fixes for good measure.

FolderSizes v4.6 is a free upgrade for existing v4 license holders. Get yours now - fresh off the compiler.

FolderSizes Reviewed in TechNet Magazine

FolderSizes is featured in the Toolbox : New Products for IT Pros section of Microsoft TechNet magazine (May, 2008 edition).

It's a really nice review, although I'm not quite sure how Greg (the reviewer) managed to capture such an ugly screen shot of the main window. To each their own, I suppose. ;-)

Reclaim Disk Space From Vista SP1

With MS Vista Service Pack 1 now available, some users have observed a non-trivial hit to their available disk space after installing the update.

What's happening is that SP1 backs up previous versions of many components during installation, consuming quite a bit of disk space in the process. If you're completely confident that you won't need to uninstall SP1, you can actually reclaim that space. Vista SP1 includes an optional tool called Vsp1cln.exe which will remove the files backed up during installation. After the Vista SP1 installation completes, Vsp1cln.exe will be located in your Windows\system32 directory. You can run it by dropping to a command prompt (or press "Winkey + R" on your keyboard) and and typing Vsp1cln.exe and pressing Enter.

The cleanup utility will warn you that you're about to make your Vista SP1 installation permanent, and prompt you for confirmation. Once confirmed, the cleanup process will begin. Again, don't execute this file removal utility unless you're certain that you won't need to uninstall Vista SP1. But if you've created a full backup of your computer prior to installing Vista SP1 (I actually prefer to image my entire system before doing this sort of thing), this may not be much of a concern.

So how much disk space can you reclaim by running Vsp1cln.exe? Most users are reporting just under a gigabyte of recovered space, depending upon which version of Vista is installed. Your mileage may vary. And if you still need a better understanding of how your disk space is being consumed, well then you need FolderSizes.

For further guidance on installing Vista SP1, see Microsoft's Windows Vista SP1 Deployment Guide.

FolderSizes and Duplicate File Detective - Updated

Key Metric Software has released updates to both FolderSizes (v4.5.1.0) and Duplicate File Detective (v2.2.0.0). Here are the download links:

Download FolderSizes v4.5.1.0 (release notes)
Download Duplicate File Detective v2.2.0.0 (release notes)

The new Duplicate File Detective release is larger in scope, and contains a considerable number of feature enhancements. If you haven't tried this powerful, dedicated duplicate file management tool - please do so soon.

Both releases are free upgrades to anyone who owns a license for the same major version number of the product.

FolderSizes, Mapped Drives, and Windows Vista

We've received a few reports from users that are unable to see one or more mapped drives from within FolderSizes when running it on Windows Vista. Unfortunately, this issue is the result of a Vista security design decision and impacts a broad range of software applications (not just FolderSizes).

The root problem is that (by default) Vista creates two user security tokens when you log in - the first being a default "filtered" (or non-admin) token and the second having administrative capabilities. Usually, you gain access to the latter (admin token) only after being prompted by a User Account Control (UAC) consent dialog.

FolderSizes contains an application manifest that causes it to run with the highest permissions available to the user, which on Windows Vista means you'll be prompted (by UAC) to allow the process to "elevate" itself and run within the context of your full admin token. This is important when using FolderSizes because it helps to ensure full access to the various storage resources that the software analyzes.

So why does any of this impact the visibility of mapped drives within FolderSizes? Because under Vista when you map a network share it is linked to the current logon session for the current process token. This means you won't have access to the mapped drive from your alternate, admin token (which FolderSizes runs under by default).

One solution is to run Windows Explorer "as administrator" (which you can do with a right-click of the Windows Explorer shortcut) and duplicate your mapped drives from there. They will then be visible to any process that elevates itself during execution.

Another option is to use UNC paths whenever possible. If you find that you can't access a mapped drive in Vista (because you created the mapping with a restricted account token), you might consider just entering the UNC path (e.g. \\server\share) into the Path box near the top of the main FolderSizes window.

Yet another option is to make a registry change that will allow Vista to share network connections between your filtered access token and your full administrator token. From MS Knowledge Base article 937624, you can do this as follows:

1. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
2. Locate and then right-click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. Point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type EnableLinkedConnections, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click EnableLinkedConnections, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
7. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer.
   

Of course, the usual warnings apply - don't edit your Windows registry unless you know what you're doing (and preferably have a backup handy just in case something goes wrong).

Finding recently saved (modified) files

FolderSizes makes it easy to find files that have been recently saved (modified). In fact, there are a number of ways of accomplishing this task with FolderSizes, but in this case we'll start with the File Dates report.

The File Dates report is one of the many views generated automatically by the FolderSizes File Reporting interface. Just click the File Reports toolbar button in the main window, give it one or more paths (the system is capable of reporting against multiple paths at once, if desired) and let it churn for a minute or two.

When report generation is complete, select the File Dates node from the report listing on the left (see screen shot below). You'll be presented with the distribution of files by age. These are broken down into a set of default ranges (e.g. "1 Day", "2 to 7 Days", etc.), which can be customized to suit your needs (via the built-in range editor window).



You may also notice a file report node just below "File Dates Detail" called "File Dates By Size", which presents the same information in (bar) graph form. This view allows you to quickly visualize where the bulk of the files reside within the file age time line (i.e. 38GB of files were modified within the last 3-6 months).



Alright, so now we know the distribution of files by date range. So how do we go about finding the specific files saved, say, within the last day? Simple - just double-click on the appropriate entry within the File Age detail listing. FolderSizes will automatically launch its internal search facility, and provide detailed information about the files within the specified date range.



Of course, you can always skip the file report generation step and use the search facility directly to find recently saved files. But that wouldn't allow me to demonstrate some of the power and cohesiveness of FolderSizes as a whole, and what fun is that? :-)

BTW, the same search drill-down capability is available from all of the grouped file reports available within FolderSizes.

FolderSizes v4.5 is Released

FolderSizes v4.5 is now officially out of beta, and has been released to the general public.

I'm extremely excited about this new release. It contains a wealth of new capabilities, including (but not limited to) Unicode support, command line access to the search facility, improved file system object sorting, numerous search system improvements (including better support for finding folders - including empty ones, a more granular file mask exclusion mechanism, etc.), numerous user interface improvements, and a variety of performance enhancements.

We've also decided to drop support for Win9x based systems (including Windows 98 and ME). At this point, the limited use of FolderSizes on these platforms is simply no longer worth the extra development and testing time required to support them.

Download the new release from our product download page. Full release notes are available here. The upgrade is free for all existing v4 license holders. And if you're still using an older version, this is another great reason to upgrade.

BTW, those of you who know me are probably aware of how seriously I take the usability and appearance of our software products. Aside from core features, this new release of FolderSizes has a broad array of user interface enhancements, a new application icon, updates to the help file, and even new graphics in the product installer. Let me know what you think!

Find Empty Folders - The Movie!

Some time ago, I posted a blog article on how to find empty folders with FolderSizes.

Well, with the release of FolderSizes v4.5 there is a new way to accomplish a similar result, and it has the advantage of only showing empty folders (you needn't sort the folder view and / or alter the subfolder view depth to get an intuitive result).

So how can this be done with FolderSizes v4.5? The key is a series of search facility enhancements that provide superior support for folder objects. In particular, folder sizes are now always computed and displayed within search result output. This, combined with a new "directory" attribute flag, makes it very easy to search just for folders with an aggregate size of zero.

I've created a brief video tutorial that demonstrates this process. Please click here to view it.

Download the free 15-day FolderSizes v4.5 trial today.

FolderSizes v4.5 BETA

FolderSizes v4.5 is just around the corner, and it has several new features and enhancements that will prove very valuable to our users. Perhaps the most important of these is Unicode support, which will allow FolderSizes to analyze and report against file systems that contain Unicode characters in their component names.

Now more than ever before, FolderSizes is being leveraged within larger enterprises that use it to analyze and manage data storage systems on a global scale. The upcoming FolderSizes v4.5 Unicode support will better support these enterprise customers while reaching out to the ever-expanding global software market as a whole.

FolderSizes v4.5 also includes a number of other important enhancements, including access to the search facility (including exporting search results) via the command line interface, improved file and folder name sorting algorithms (including superior support for Unicode characters and "natural" sort ordering), lots of user interface and performance improvements, and more.

Since there are a considerable number of changes in FolderSizes v4.5, we'll be running through a brief BETA period - and we could use your help. But before you download and install the BETA, please read this list of considerations:

• This is beta software. It probably has bugs.
• The v4.5 BETA will upgrade an existing v4.x installation (you can always uninstall it and re-install v4.2 from our public website download page).
• We need feedback, and we need it fast. If you find any problems with the FolderSizes v4.5 BETA build - please email us immediately.
• In particular, we need people to test the new Unicode capabilities of FolderSizes v4.5. If you have need of this new capability, please give it a merciless thrashing and report any problems you find.
  
  

If you've read the points above and want to try to the FolderSizes v4.5 BETA, please download it from here:

http://www.foldersizes.com/download-folder-sizes/test/FolderSizes4-Setup.exe

Complete release notes can be viewed via the Help menu.

Duplicate File Detective 2.0 - Released!

The next generation of our powerful, professional-grade duplicate file management software, Duplicate File Detective 2.0, has been released.

I'm really excited about this new version. The software itself has lots of great new features, such as an integrated image preview panel and byte-for-byte file content matching, plus we have a brand new website and product logo.

To celebrate, we've decided to make DFD v2.0 a free upgrade for all existing Duplicate File Detective customers. If you've purchased a v1.x license in the past, your registration key will work in 2.0 - just download and install.

For more details on what's new in DFD V2.0 - check out the features page of our new website.

Duplicate File Detective v2.0 Coming Soon

We've reached a major milestone in the development of Duplicate File Detective v2.0, and we're now actively looking for BETA testers.

If you're familiar with software BETA programs and are interested in trying out DFD v2.0, please email me directly and I'll send you the download link. And please - we need people that are going to put this release through its paces and report back to us with their thoughts / impressions. If you don't have the time or inclination to do this, it's best that you wait for the public release (hopefully only a few weeks away).

So, what's new and improved in Duplicate File Detective v2.0? Well, that's a looooong list - but here's a sampling:

• Image preview (docking) window
• Numerous extensions to smart marking system, including pattern matching
  
• Byte-for-byte duplicate file content comparison
• Numerous new duplicate file detail report columns
• Extensive user interface improvements
• Major performance enhancements, including multi-threaded file hashing
• MS Vista friendly installer, application file storage, etc.
• Improvements to data export capabilities
• Much more

We're hoping to move fairly quickly through the BETA testing period, so please contact me soon if you're interested.

FolderSizes v4.1 and the File Extension Researcher

Today we're releasing FolderSizes v4.1, an update with a sprinkling of new feature goodness and numerous performance optimizations. There are also a few minor bug fixes thrown in for good measure.

One of the new v4.1 features is something that I've actually been thinking about for a while now - a File Extension Researcher tool. As you're probably aware, there is no central authority for file extensions, and it can sometimes be difficult to track down the source of file extensions that you encounter. Well, the FolderSizes v4.1 File Extension Researcher is designed to help.

As you can see from the first screen shot, the File Extension Researcher allows you to enter a file extension (e.g. ".pdf", ".dat", etc.) and provides two pieces of information in return. First, it shows the Windows shell file association, which largely controls how Windows itself responds to the extension. But for many extensions, Windows has no shell association whatsoever, and the second piece of information - a general listing of potential application matches - can help in those cases.

Additionally, you can click the Research Online button, which will launch your default web browser and pull up additional details on the extension in question. Currently, the source for this additional information is FILExt.com - an excellent website dedicated to this task.

You can click the View All Extensions button to see a complete listing of all the file extensions that FolderSizes knows about (over 23 thousand of them!). To keep things manageable, the extension browser window groups the extensions by leading alpha character, number, or symbol.

As an added convenience, the new File Extension Researcher can be launched by right-clicking any file listed anywhere within FolderSizes 4.1 (as long as the file has an extension).

There are lots of other goodies in the new FolderSizes v4.1 release (see release notes on the download page). This just happens to be one of my favorites. :-)

FolderSizes Version 4 is Released

Key Metric Software is proud to announce a major update to its powerful, network-aware disk space management software - FolderSizes 4.0.

This new release adds a wealth of new capabilities and improvements. Here's a partial list:

In addition to these improvements and new features, FolderSizes 4.0 contains dozens of smaller enhancements that work to greatly improve overall robustness and usability. Nearly every aspect of the application, from the low-level file system scanning engine to the rendering of graph bars, has been tweaked and optimized.

Note that FolderSizes 4.0 installs (and is licensed) separately from existing versions of the application. This allows current FolderSizes users to fully evaluate the new version before deciding whether or not they wish to upgrade (special upgrade pricing is available) - without disturbing their existing product installations.

Download the new FolderSizes 4.0 release now, and try it for yourself.

Finding Microsoft Office Temporary Files

Some Microsoft Office applications will create temporary files comprised of eight alphanumeric characters without a filename extension. Typically these are cleaned up by the application automatically, but various issues (such as network connectivity interruptions or anti-virus software poking its head in) can cause such files to be orphaned.

Isolating these types of temporary files for cleanup can be tricky. But the flexible FolderSizes search facility can do it with ease. Just click the Search button in the main FolderSizes application window, and select the FileName matching tab. Enable regular expression mode and enter the following pattern:

(\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a)!.

The expression above matches exactly 8 alphanumeric characters with no extension, which is what many MS Office titles name certain temp files.

With FolderSizes, it's also easy to find these files within a specific date range, size range, or even search by file owner.

FolderSizes Customer Testimonial

We're fortunate enough to get a lot of really positive feedback from the users of our software products. Today I received an email from Keith S. from Duncanville, TX. He had the following to say about FolderSizes (our disk space management software):

FolderSizes Version 3.6.1.0 Released

We've released a minor update to our market-leading disk space visualization software - FolderSizes - today.

Version 3.6.1.0 contains mostly minor improvements and bug fixes, and is a recommended (and entirely free) upgrade for all FolderSizes users. Simply download the latest version and install it, and the upgrade will occur automatically.

Release notes are available online here, should you wish to review them.

As always, feel free to contact me directly if you need anything.

Vista Compability Summary

Now that Microsoft Vista has been officially released to manufacturing (and will be available broadly to consumers at the start of 2007), I would like to summarize our product compatibility findings.

Put simply, all Key Metric Software products are fully compatible with all editions of Microsoft Vista. We've thoroughly tested FolderSizes, Duplicate File Detective, and OfficeStatus. We did end up making some cosmetic tweaks to the client interface of OfficeStatus (our new staff in / out board software solution) version 1.5 for the benefit of Vista, but they were quite minor.

If you do happen to stumble across any compatibility issues that we may have missed, please be sure to let us know.

Vista Ultimate RC1 - Disk Space Analysis

Now that Windows Vista is nearing public release, I've been spending a bit more time running compatibility tests with FolderSizes. My findings - FolderSizes works pretty much perfectly with the most recent Vista builds.

I'm actually testing with the RC1 build of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Not surprisingly, the default installation of Vista Ultimate chews up a lot of disk space. Running a FolderSizes file report against my C drive reveals a significant distribution of large files:

If I switch to the File Sizes detail view in the navigation tree and double-click the 3MB-1GB file size range, FolderSizes will automatically launch a search window that shows me exactly which files exist in that size range:

Apparently the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista installs quite a bit of sample media by default. I suspect that Vista's deeper graphical capabilities will translate into greater disk space requirements regardless of which edition you install.

I will, of course, continue testing FolderSizes compatibility with Windows Vista right up to the final release of the product. And if you're doing the same, please feel free to contact me directly should you find anything amiss.

WinFS is dead

Microsoft has effectively killed off WinFS, once declared a "pillar" of the upcoming Vista operating system:

http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/23/644706.aspx

It's official - Microsoft now spends more time spinning their technology failures than actually creating software.

New PDF help file available

Just wanted to note that the PDF version of the online help file has been upgraded, revised, and improved.

You can download it from: http://www.foldersizes.com/download-folder-sizes/FolderSizes.pdf.

BTW, the latest public release of FolderSizes (v3.5) also upgrades the online help file format to HTML Help, which provides numerous usability improvements.

FolderSizes v3.5 is Released

We released version 3.5 of FolderSizes today. It features improved search and scan filtering capabilities (with new regular expression support), improved XML exporting (with a new XSLT transformation file included), revised online help (now in HTML Help format), and more.

To download the latest and/or review the full v3.5 release notes, please visit the FolderSizes download page.