FolderSizes - Disk Space Manager

FolderSizes v4.8.3.10 is Released

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:02:00 +0000

Today, Key Metric Software released FolderSizes v4.8.3.10. This is a minor update, containing most bug fixes and minor feature / performance enhancements.

Please feel free to download immediately or review the latest product release notes online.

FolderSizes v4.8.2.92 is Released

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:15:00 +0000

Today, Key Metric Software is releasing v4.8.2.92 of FolderSizes - our powerful disk space analysis software product.

This release includes a number of minor feature enhancements, as well as several bug fixes. New features include:

Enhanced theme support - Now users can choose between blue, black, silver, aqua, scenic, white and traditional themes. These themes are also now better integrated into the application overall (including matching graph backgrounds, by default).
New search columns - The search detail list now includes file and folder count columns. These are not visible by default, so right-click a column header and select them to make them visible.
Improved Windows 7 taskbar support - FolderSizes now shows indeterminate progress in the Windows 7 taskbar during normal, file report, and search report generation.
Improved status bars - All status bars now auto-resize themselves intelligently, ensuring better use of screen real estate. We've also added a "excluded" pane to all report generating windows to reflect the number of folders current being excluded.
Stop file reports and show results - The stop button in the file report generation window now allows users to cancel report generation while showing results accumulated thus far.

The remaining changes are bug fixes, again most of them minor. Please feel free to download the new release and/or review the complete release notes.

Actual vs. Allocated Disk Space

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:03:00 +0000

Ever wondered about the difference between the "size" and "allocated" (the latter is also know as "size on disk") columns shown in nearly all FolderSizes detail reports?

If so, please check out this article on www.disk-space-manager.com for a discussion of "cluster overhang" and its impact on file systems.

Duplicate File Detective v3.0 is Released

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:03:00 +0000

Many of our valued FolderSizes users also leverage the duplicate finding power of Duplicate File Detective - our professional-grade duplicate file management software.

So it is with great pleasure that I announce the release of Duplicate File Detective v3.0. This new version provides a wealth of new features, including Unicode support, support for Windows 7, a greatly enhanced user interface experience, improvements to the integrated file hash calculator tool, support for very long file paths, vastly improved performance, and much more.

With this new release, you can find and remove duplicate files with unparalleled ease and safety.

For a more thorough review, please see What's New in Duplicate File Detective v3.0.

FolderSizes is Compatible with Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:56:00 +0000

FolderSizes v4.8 has been tested to meet all of the technical requirements to be Compatible with Windows 7.

Microsoft recommends "Compatible with Windows® 7" applications because they have passed Microsoft-designed tests to help ensure they install readily every time and minimize the number of crashes, hangs, and restarts that you experience. This all helps ensure a compatible and reliable experience with any edition of Windows 7, including 64-bit.

"Compatible with Windows 7" software:

Is tested for compatibility and reliability on Windows 7.
Passed Microsoft designed tests to minimize the possibility of crashes, hangs, and reboots.
Represents a commitment that the product will continue to work over the life of Windows 7.
Meets privacy standards set forth by the Anti-Spyware Coalition.
Installs cleanly and reliably.
Eliminates unnecessary reboots.
Ensures compatibility with Windows 7, both 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

FolderSizes v4.8.1 is Released

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:04:00 +0000

FolderSizes v4.8.1 is a maintenance update that provides automatic update checking (with notifications), incremental display of the folder map data visualization during the file system scanning process, as well as a handful of other minor improvements and bug fixes.

Full release notes are available here.

FolderSizes v4.8 is Released

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:46:00 +0000

Today, Key Metric Software of Traverse City, MI releases version 4.8 of FolderSizes, the world leader in disk space analysis and visualization software.

New features include:

Support for Windows 7
Improved support for 64-bit Windows operating systems with a new 64-bit version of the FolderSizes shell context menu
Broader, more scalable, and more resource efficient support for exporting reports as XML
New support for visualizing allocated disk space (e.g. "size on disk"), which accounts for cluster overhang, compression, etc.
New ability to search and filter by allocated file system object size
Numerous performance enhancements, especially in file report detail view sorting
A new column in search results that shows file system object name length
New ability to exclude folders from search results
Improved drill-down from within range-based and categorical file reports
Many other improvements and minor bug fixes

This release is a free upgrade for any existing FolderSizes v4.x license holder.

The full v4.8.0.55 release notes can be viewed here. Or proceed directly to download.

Over 10,000 FolderSizes Licenses Sold

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:14:00 +0000

Key Metric Software has now sold more than ten thousand unique FolderSizes product licenses.

And the actual user count is much higher. Why? Because we have numerous large enterprise customers, such as ExxonMobil and Chevron (just two examples), who have worldwide license contracts with many, many individual users. What's more, a large percentage of our license sales are for multi-user "license packs" and site-wide licenses (even though we only count these as one license sale).

Why has FolderSizes become so pervasive? Because regardless of how many cheap clones and open-source freebies (with a fraction of the features) appear on the market, FolderSizes is the obvious "professional grade" choice for businesses. Not only does FolderSizes support advanced functionality not available in other solutions, it's also backed by a software company that's deeply committed to customer satisfaction. As other disk space visualization and management tools have come and gone, FolderSizes continues to be developed and vigorously supported.

When you (or your company) licenses FolderSizes, you're ensuring the continuity of the best disk space analysis and management software tool on the market today.

And you know what - we're not slowing down. More about the next major release of FolderSizes in a future blog.

Empty Folders - Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:54:00 +0000

A lot of people use FolderSizes for its integrated search facility, which we've engineered from the ground up to be super-flexible. You can get answers to a vast number of data storage questions using FolderSizes search, and one of the most popular questions is - where are my empty folders?

Of course, with FolderSizes you can find empty folders not only on your local computer file system, but on any file system accessible to FolderSizes (including other machines accessible via your local area network, etc.).

I've talked before about how to use FolderSizes to find empty folders - we've even made a video about it. But in this blog entry, I'm also going to provide a sample FolderSizes search definition file for getting this job done. Here it is:

Empty_Folders_Search_Job.xml

Using this search job with FolderSizes is very simple:

Download the search job XML file above and save it on your computer somewhere (you can right-click it and choose "save as" from the resulting menu).
Start FolderSizes v4.7 and click the Search toolbar button.
In the search window, click the Load toolbar button and navigate to the search job file saved in step 1.
Tweak the search paths to suit your needs. This sample search definition file scans the "C:\" drive, but any file system (local or remote) is fair game.
Click the Start toolbar button.

That's it - you're off and running. When the search process completes, you'll have a list of empty folders, which you can then sort, export for later analysis, print, etc.

FolderSizes = Safe and Secure Software

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:14:00 +0000

Here at KeyMetric Software, we have a deep and ongoing commitment to releasing safe and secure software products to our customers. For example, our flagship software product - FolderSizes - is in use by many thousands of organizations and individuals across the globe, and we take seriously our responsibility to ensure the security of those product installations.

Toward this end, here are the most recent results of our comprehensive anti-virus scanning process (performed against the latest publicly available build of FolderSizes):

Note: a virus scan result of "-" means that the anti-virus product detected no threats.

Antivirus	Version	Last Update	Result
AhnLab-V3	2008.12.19.0	2008.12.18	-
AntiVir	7.9.0.45	2008.12.18	-
Authentium	5.1.0.4	2008.12.18	-
Avast	4.8.1281.0	2008.12.18	-
AVG	8.0.0.199	2008.12.18	-
BitDefender	7.2	2008.12.18	-
CAT-QuickHeal	10.00	2008.12.18	-
ClamAV	0.94.1	2008.12.18	-
Comodo	771	2008.12.17	-
DrWeb	4.44.0.09170	2008.12.18	-
eSafe	7.0.17.0	2008.12.17	-
eTrust-Vet	31.6.6267	2008.12.18	-
Ewido	4.0	2008.12.18	-
F-Prot	4.4.4.56	2008.12.17	-
F-Secure	8.0.14332.0	2008.12.18	-
Fortinet	3.117.0.0	2008.12.18	-
GData	19	2008.12.18	-
Ikarus	T3.1.1.45.0	2008.12.18	-
K7AntiVirus	7.10.557	2008.12.18	-
Kaspersky	7.0.0.125	2008.12.18	-
McAfee	5467	2008.12.18	-
McAfee+Artemis	5467	2008.12.18	-
Microsoft	1.4205	2008.12.18	-
NOD32	3703	2008.12.18	-
Norman	5.80.02	2008.12.17	-
Panda	9.0.0.4	2008.12.18	-
PCTools	4.4.2.0	2008.12.18	-
Prevx1	V2	2008.12.18	-
Rising	21.08.32.00	2008.12.18	-
SecureWeb-Gateway	6.7.6	2008.12.18	-
Sophos	4.37.0	2008.12.18	-
Sunbelt	3.2.1801.2	2008.12.11	-
Symantec	10	2008.12.18	-
TheHacker	6.3.1.4.191	2008.12.17	-
TrendMicro	8.700.0.1004	2008.12.18	-
VBA32	3.12.8.10	2008.12.18	-
ViRobot	2008.12.18.1525	2008.12.18	-
VirusBuster	4.5.11.0	2008.12.18	-

Additional information
File size: 6125496 bytes
MD5...: 08111d4d3929acd8d80e74b29f32c5de
SHA1..: 2ed7d2e8f0f6b2e970eabc96141f78672c93e623
SHA256: b5aae59e5b53eb0ee504db60a60951c4c00ce1c8e852fc5e928507e2bfa94e06
SHA512: 15d1f978c4a7ed50e842752b138d1e7e949ff39fd42cbd5c3b7b53de6b39e999 bc8549006e1f2a50cbe57a35880ffa648968fa0928a786b5d3f112577a52d52d
ssdeep: 98304:PgXgeaQyIbt1tNuKyYGz7/W+kpyS3mM2/v3Vdn9rMB++HaSXWB1cEE6Duk Wu:PgXge/nPN+/8yG2Hk3mB1cEE6DJ

Disk Usage in Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:41:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:42:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:57:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Sun, 25 May 2008 15:33:00 +0000

Let's talk about what we've been working on for our upcoming FolderSizes v4.6 release.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:53:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:54:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:25:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:24:00 +0000

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:

Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
Locate and then right-click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
Point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type EnableLinkedConnections, and then press ENTER.
Right-click EnableLinkedConnections, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:43:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:18:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:30:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:06:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:30:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 19:09:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Richards) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:36:00 +0000

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. :-)