Finding Folders with a Large Number of Files (or Subfolders)

The new FolderSizes 8 release extends the abilities of its built-in search tool by allowing you to find folders based upon their contained file or subfolder count.

This new feature makes it easy to answer questions such as:

  • What folders contain a large number of files (or child folders)?
  • What folders contain no files (or child folders) at all?
  • What folders contain between 100 and 200 files (or child folders)?
  • And many others…
To get started, launch the FolderSizes Search tool and enter your desired search paths. Next, switch to the Search Rules tab, click the New Rule button, and select New Folder Rule. This will show the Folder Rule Editor, which contains an Item Count tab.
Finding Folders with a Large Number of Files

Notice that there are two comparison modes available. When the “compare immediate file count” or “compare immediate folder count” options are used, then only immediate children of the folder will be compared by the search rule. If this option is not engaged, then the comparison will be performed against the full aggregate count of all child files and subfolders.

Once configured, click OK to save the rule and then run the search to view the results. The resulting list of files and/or folders can then be copied, moved, deleted, or archived using the buttons available in the Search window toolbar.

Also please note that FolderSizes 8 ships with a number of Search sample projects, including one that helps you to find folders with a large number of immediate files. Just click the Samples button in the Search window toolbar to see what’s available.

Posted: January 20, 2016 5:37 pm

FolderSizes is Safe, Trusted, and Guaranteed

Now that FolderSizes 8 is available to the public, we’d just like to remind everyone about our deep commitment to producing safe software products that you can trust.

FolderSizes 8 is 100% free of viruses, malware, and adware. Please see FolderSizes’ current status on VirusTotal for details.

We also proudly present a Norton Secured seal on our product homepage, and you can view that seal here:

This seal offers independent verification (by Symantec) of website ownership and states that we’re 100% free of malware. It also links to our Norton Rating, which indicates that our website has zero computer or identity threats of any kind.

So please use FolderSizes with confidence, knowing that we’re working hard to produce a safe, trusted, and guaranteed software product.

Posted: January 8, 2016 9:22 pm

FolderSizes 8 is Here!

Today I’m happy to announce the public availability of FolderSizes 8 – the new major version of our market-leading disk space analysis and reporting tool for Windows.

It took over a year of active development and hundreds of testing hours to reach this point, and we couldn’t be happier with the result. Nearly every aspect of FolderSizes has been touched by this release, starting with deep improvements to our core file system analysis engine and carrying all the way through to the user interface.

Learn more about what’s new in FolderSizes 8 here, or just go right for the download and try it for yourself.

With the release of FolderSizes 8, we’ve also revealed our new product website. Clean, professional, and mobile device friendly, the new website is designed to help our existing users find what they need quickly while simultaneously showing new users what makes FolderSizes so special.

As always, your feedback regarding FolderSizes 8 is very much appreciated, so don’t hesitate to contact us with your thoughts, questions, or comments.

Posted: January 6, 2016 9:21 pm

Free NTFS Permissions Reporter

System administrators are constantly being asked to verify user permissions for specific files and folders. This is often a time-consuming task, with multiple layers of NTFS permissions and repeated adjustments over time creating a security labyrinth.

To help address this problem, Key Metric Software has released the first version of Permissions Reporter, a free software tool that allows you to quickly validate the current security posture of entire file systems at once. All with multiple export formats, command-line support, built-in scheduling, and much more.

NTFS Permissions Reporter for Windows

Download Permissions Reporter today for free and let us know what you think.

Posted: May 14, 2015 10:24 pm

Disk Space Cleanup Tip: Use NTFS Compression

Many folks are familiar with the concept of zipping files or folders in order to reduce their size. However, Windows has the built-in ability to compress folders and files in a manner that is very transparent.

Why NTFS Compression?

As alluded to above, the biggest advantage of using NTFS compression is its transparency. There’s no need to compress and decompress manually like with stand-alone utilities such as WinZip, etc. Once applied, NTFS compression and decompression occurs automatically, without the need for any user intervention.

NTFS compression is also very flexible in terms of its scope – it can be applied to a single file, one or more folders, or an entire disk drive (NTFS volume).

Tip: As its name implies, NTFS compression is supported only on NTFS file systems (e.g. it won’t work with FAT32, for example). Not sure what type of file system you have? Just right-click a drive in Windows Explorer and select Properties from the resulting pop-up menu. The file system type will be displayed in the General tab of the Properties window.

When to Use NTFS Compression

Some file types compress better than others. NTFS compression is well-suited to a range of file types, including:

  • Documents, such as those produced by Microsoft Office
  • Text files such as as log files, configuration files, XML data, and many others
  • Uncompressed image files (such as bitmap images)

When NOT to Use NTFS Compression

It’s important to note that NTFS compression can cause a decrease in performance with working with NTFS-compressed files. This happens because Windows is automatically decompressing files for you behind the scenes whenever you open them. When you close the file, Windows then compresses it again. This process does consume some amount of computing resources (primarily CPU time), making NTFS compression more suitable to folders and files that are infrequently accessed.

NTFS compression also isn’t well-suited to all file types. For example, many image file formats (such as JPEG, PNG, etc.) are already compressed and won’t benefit much (if at all) from NTFS compression. The same is true for some video file formats, zipped files, program installers, etc.

Compressing an Entire Drive

You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group to complete this procedure. To compressing an NTFS volume:

  1. Click Start, then click My Computer.
  2. Right-click the volume you want to compress, and then click Properties.
  3. On the General tab, click to select the Compress Volume to save disk space check box, and then click OK.
  4. In Confirm Attribute Changes, click the option you want.

Compressing Individual Files or Folders

  1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
  2. Double-click the NTFS Volume that contains the folder or folders you want to compress.
  3. Right-click the file or folder you want to compress, and then click Properties.
  4. On the General tab, click Advanced.
  5. Click to select the Compress contents to save disk space check box, and then click OK.
  6. In the Properties dialog box, click OK.
  7. In Confirm Attribute Changes, click the option you want.

Finally, a key component of using any compression mechanism effectively is understanding how your disk space is currently being allocated. FolderSizes can help you to understand precisely which files and folders are taking up the most space, as well as identify logical compression candidates (e.g. large folders, old files, document file types, etc.).

Posted: January 21, 2015 6:04 pm