Can ShowSize list ALL files even in sub-folders that were created on a certain date, such as, all files created today or a date I can enter? I would love to be able to see all the files created or modified today because I have a disk that is filling up fast and not sure with thousands of sub-folders where the data is going.
Instead of putting all the possible features in filters and making them too complicated, we have made the reports more flexible, epsecially when you can do the sorting on any column.
For example, you can get the files created or modified on a certain date by using the “Only Files” report (not available in ShowSize PE). Once you get this report, click (once or twice) on the “Modified” column header, so that the files are sorted in the recently modified date order and the most recently modified file comes at the top. Then select the range of files in the dates you are interested in (click and shift-Click) and copy-paste to a document. Please have a look at the screen shots for “Only Files Report” to get an clear idea.
Another alternative is to export the report to a CSV file. You can do further analysis of the data by importing this CSV file to a database or a spreadsheet.
Incidentally, we have a an advanced option that allows you to use modified time as “later” of create and modified time, making the reports even more useful.
I am looking for a Utility to report when the files were last used on a Windows 2003 server. This is to allow me to determine what can be archived and the disk space required for that. Does this feature exist in ShowSize?
Please download ShowSize PE from showsize.com and run a scan on one of your drives. Then see the “Unused Files” report.
The only problem is that some Windows versions can turn off the update of last access date of files. Windows Vista does that. On earlier Windows systems like yours, this update is usually switched on by default but someone can switch it off by tweaking the registry.
You can verify whether your Windows system does that by using ShowSize on a folder that you have not used recently. Observe what data the report “Unused Files” shows for say, 30 days period. Select one of these files that appears to have not been used in that time. Then right-click and see its proprties by Windows Explorer. This should update the access date of the file to today’s date. You can see that on the Properties immediately. A refresh from ShowSize will also remove that file from the Unused Files report. If it doesn’t work that way then the feature to record the access date is switched off on your Windows system.
Once you verify that Windows is recording the access date correctly, you can run ShowSize on other locations. But beware of locations shared with Vista computers. Those by default turn off this feature.
We have officially released ShowSize 5. You now get the latest version ShowSize 5.0.2.2 when you buy ShowSize. Moreover, you get additional features when you buy ShowSize 5-user-license or ShowSize. For more details, please see Compare Editions.
The new features are described on ShowSize 5 page.
Scans for folder sizes take time. It depends on how big the folder is in terms of number of folders and files deep within it. If you start scanning a big disk to add up the file and folder sizes, it may contain hundreds of thousands of folders and millions of files. You don’t want to sit there waiting for a full disk scan when all you are interested in is a specific folder and its subfolders. Neither do you want to use the mighty Task Manager to stop a wrong scan started by mistake on a big folder. Beware of disk utilities that don’t give you any way to cancel a scan. Such utilities appear to hang because they often don’t display how the scan is progressing. It takes quite an effort to build such features that give useful feedback. No wonder, you often reach for the Task Manager to stop such programs.
ShowSize is smart software. You can precisely go to scan the folder that you are really interested in. And, if by mistake, you start a scan on a big folder and then change your mind, you don’t have to grit your teeth and sit through till it completes. You can simply cancel it by clicking on a Cancel button.
There are many other time saving features. You can have different copies of ShowSize running on different folders. The new ShowSize 5 has a special feature for 5-licenses-or-more that allows to save a scan result and then later examine it on any computer (even one that is not connected to that location). Get the smart software that is designed and optimized for convenience. Just scan a big folder with ShowSize and then do the scan with any of other such utilities. You will know the difference. Talk to one of our customers and they will tell you why they prefer to use ShowSize.
Read more about better software design of ShowSize in other articles under Why Use ShowSize?.
We are glad to announce that a new version 5.0.2 of ShowSize is in pre-release. It is only available to the paid users of ShowSize (not PE) from the special user support area at support.showsize.com.
ShowSize 5 officially supports Vista.
The major new features of ShowSize 5 are described in this note.
ShowSize PE 5 is not ready yet but we are working on it and will release it soon. Please watch this Blog.
I will attempt to explain why we had to discontinue the “Unused files report” on Windows Vista and why I advise not to use it even on earlier Windows systems now.
Vista breaks the “Unused Files” feature for NTFS:
On Vista, by default the “last access date” of the files are not updated on NTFS file systems. Microsoft did this to improve Vista performance on NTFS systems.
This means that the above information is useless for all the files on NTFS volumes. There is a registry tweak possible so that Vista starts updating the “last access date” of files. But even then the information won’t be useful for quite some time. For example, if you switch on this feature now you will have to wait for at least 30 days of use to get a report that shows files not used in last 30 days. Hence, it’s not a good solution as there is no way for ShowSize to determine when the tweak was made. In other words, one can never rely on Unused column or the Unused Files report. Besides this tweak might run into performance issues on Vista.
Corporate/LAN users, beware: Moreover, if many Vista systems are using files on a shared NTFS volume, some will update the last access date and some won’t depending on whether they were fixed with the registry tweak. So on a shared volume you can never be sure if the Unused Files report is useful at all.
THE HARD DECISION THAT WE MADE: Hence, it’s not possible to find a decent solution to this problem. We can at most give warning messages on Vista for NTFS volumes. But we can never be sure on shared volumes. Hence, in the newer ShowSize 5, we have entirely dropped this Unused Files report and the Used column in all the reports on Windows Vista.
This article is old. The new ShowSize 5 natively supports Windows Vista.
Important points about running ShowSize 4 on Vista:
Details of running ShowSize 4 on Windows Vista:
(In particular, please see the last point on Unused Files, marked in red)
Please look at the following information only if you want to run ShowSize 4 on Vista. Paid users can instead get the latest pre-release version 5 from the user support area.
If you can’t run ShowSize at all (it stops immediately) then a DEP setting can fix it. This is explained in the following steps.
There can be two solutions:
If the problem you are facing is related to DEP then the problem will go away.
On Windows Vista, you need to run ShowSize as administrator to install the above menus (a Tools operation). After that, you can exit and run it as normal.
On Vista, by default the “last access date” of the files are not updated on NTFS file systems. Microsoft did this to improve Vista performance on NTFS systems.
This means that the above information is useless for all the files on NTFS volumes. There is a registry tweak possible so that Vista starts updating the “last access date” of files. But even then the information won’t be useful for quite some time. For example, if you switch on this feature now you will have to wait for at least 30 days of use to get a report that shows files not used in last 30 days. Hence, it’s not a good solution as there is no way for ShowSize to determine when the tweak was made. In other words, one can never rely on Unused column or the Unused Files report. Besides this tweak might run into performance issues on Vista.
Corporate/LAN users, beware: Moreover, if many Vista systems are using files on a shared NTFS volume, some will update the last access date and some won’t depending on whether they were fixed with the registry tweak. So on a shared volume you can never be sure if the Unused Files report is useful at all.
THE HARD DECISION THAT WE MADE: Hence, it’s not possible to find a decent solution to this problem. We can at most give warning messages on Vista for NTFS volumes. But we can never be sure on shared volumes. Hence, in the newer ShowSize 5, we have entirely dropped this Unused Files report and the Used column in all the reports on Windows Vista.
Yes, you can put on the option to display values in bytes in the General page of the Options screen.
