ENFORCE STORAGE POLICIES

File Owners Report

The File Owners Report delivers comprehensive visibility into storage space allocation across your organization. This powerful reporting feature breaks down disk usage by domain and user, providing administrators with the granular data needed to enforce quota policies effectively.

With this report, you can quickly identify which users are consuming the most storage resources, track storage trends by department or team, and pinpoint users who may be approaching or exceeding their allocated quotas. The report includes detailed metrics such as file counts, total space consumed, and average file sizes per user, giving you a complete picture of user storage behavior.

This information proves invaluable when making decisions about storage resource allocation, identifying training opportunities for users who may not be following best practices, and justifying storage expansion investments to management with concrete usage data.

Trend Analysis

Understanding how your storage footprint evolves over time is critical for proactive storage management. FolderSizes' Trend Analysis capabilities enable you to track storage growth patterns with precision, identifying exactly which files and folders are driving capacity consumption.

The system can be scheduled to perform automated file system scans and generate detailed analysis data exports at regular intervals—daily, weekly, or monthly. This historical data is then consumed by the built-in Trend Analyzer, which performs comparative analysis across different time periods to show you exactly where growth is occurring.

You'll gain insights into seasonal storage patterns, identify folders experiencing rapid growth that may require attention, and detect anomalies that could indicate policy violations or unusual user behavior. This forward-looking visibility allows you to anticipate capacity needs before they become critical, plan storage expansions strategically, and identify opportunities for data archival or cleanup before space constraints impact operations.

Disk Reporting

While folder-level analysis provides detailed insights, sometimes you need a broader perspective. FolderSizes' disk-level reporting features give you a high-level view of storage consumption across entire volumes, both local and network-attached.

The disk reporting module automatically captures historical data and presents it through intuitive visualizations that make it easy to spot trends at a glance. You can monitor multiple disks simultaneously, comparing usage patterns across different storage systems and locations. The reports clearly show where growth and contraction are occurring, helping you identify which volumes are approaching capacity and which may have room for consolidation.

This bird's-eye view is particularly valuable for organizations managing diverse storage infrastructures, as it helps prioritize which areas require immediate attention and which are operating within normal parameters. The historical tracking also enables you to demonstrate storage utilization trends to stakeholders, supporting business cases for infrastructure investments or validating the success of cleanup initiatives.

File Types Report

Storage policies often include guidelines about which types of data can be stored on corporate resources. The File Types Report provides immediate visibility into storage consumption patterns by file type, enabling you to verify compliance with these policies.

This report categorizes every file in the analyzed storage area by extension and file type, calculating the total space consumed by each category. You can quickly discover if users are storing personal multimedia files, large video content, or other file types that shouldn't reside on corporate storage. The report makes it easy to identify which file types dominate your storage landscape and whether that distribution aligns with your organization's intended use.

Beyond policy enforcement, this information helps optimize storage performance. For example, discovering that a large percentage of your storage is consumed by archived email data might prompt a move to specialized email archiving solutions, or finding significant video file storage might lead to implementing a dedicated media management system. The File Types Report transforms raw storage data into actionable intelligence about how your organization actually uses its storage resources.

File Sizes Report

The File Sizes Report provides a unique perspective on your storage by analyzing the distribution of files according to their size. This analysis reveals important patterns that can significantly impact storage efficiency and inform cleanup strategies.

On one end of the spectrum, you can identify storage areas overrun by small files. These seemingly insignificant files can waste substantial space due to cluster overhang—the difference between a file's actual size and the minimum allocation unit on disk. Thousands of small files can result in wasted capacity that adds up quickly, particularly on file systems with large cluster sizes.

On the other end, the report helps you locate large files that may be prime candidates for offline archival or deletion. These space-consuming files, often including database backups, video files, or software installation images, can free up significant capacity when moved to more appropriate storage tiers. The report allows you to sort by size, making it trivial to identify the "low-hanging fruit" that will yield the most immediate space savings with minimal effort.

Duplicate File Report

Duplicate files represent one of the most common sources of wasted storage capacity in enterprise environments. Users frequently share files via email or collaboration tools, resulting in multiple copies saved across different folders, drives, and user directories.

The report groups duplicate files together, showing you exactly how many copies exist, where they're located, and how much cumulative space they consume. This information enables you to implement deduplication strategies, establish better file sharing practices, or deploy shared repositories where single copies of files can be accessed by multiple users. By eliminating duplicates, organizations often reclaim 10-30% or more of their storage capacity without losing any actual data.

Advanced Search Capabilities

Storage policy enforcement often requires answering specific questions about what's stored on your systems. FolderSizes includes a powerful, rules-based search engine designed to answer these questions quickly and accurately, regardless of the size or complexity of your storage environment.

The search tool goes far beyond simple file name matching. You can create sophisticated queries that combine multiple criteria, such as file size, dates (created, modified, or accessed), file attributes, ownership, and file types. Want to find all multimedia files larger than 100MB created in the last 30 days by users in a specific department? The search tool makes this trivial.

This capability proves invaluable during policy audits, security investigations, or compliance reviews. You can quickly answer questions like "Are there any personal files in our confidential data store?", "How many files owned by departed employees remain on our servers?", or "Which folders contain outdated files that haven't been accessed in over two years?" The rule-based approach allows you to save common searches for repeated use, ensuring consistent enforcement of policy criteria across your storage infrastructure.