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[Discuss] Evaluating directory structure comparison tools   [Discuss]

By: Peter Shute       
Date: Aug 20,2013 at 05:34

For many years I've wanted a way of comparing snapshots of a file system so that I can quickly identify the cause of sudden increases or decreases in disk space. I've discussed it here a few times, and the best I've come up with till now is to save Ztree ztlog files so that I can later map that share under a different drive letter, then compare the real drive with the saved "phantom drive".

I've been trying to find and test software that does this sort of thing for me. The best I've found so far is Power Admin's WatchDisk and Storage Monitor programs, but both have severe shortcomings.

WatchDisk is a small program that scans a disk's dir structure and saves the results into a rapidly growing Access database file (can do SQL Server and MySQL). Once you've got at least two snapshots, you can view a comparison and sort by folder size difference, and drill down into the list of folders to see which subfolder has changed the most.

By coincidence I had set the second scan going just before leaving work, and a little while later we ran out of diskspace on one server volume. I was able to remote control in from my iPad on the train and use the software to identify the culprit within seconds. A user had copied all her holiday photos to her dir on the server.

But when I tried to demonstrate this to a colleague next day, a third and fourth scan had taken place, and the software only allows comparison of the two most recent scans. Therefore this potentially brilliant little program will only be of any use if you happen to use it just after an incident.

Power Admin tech support said I need the more powerful Storage Monitor program to do what I want, so I loaded a trial version of that too.

Sadly, this much larger version of the software runs as a service and has a web interface, so it's extremely unwieldy. It's aimed at producing scheduled reports rather than instantaneous views, and while it can do what I want, the process is torturous and illogical, and drilling down into dirs generates a separate report. One ends up with dozens of reports saved that one doesn't particularly need.

I've looked at quite a few other programs, but these two seem by far the best suited to the problem. What a sad state of affairs.

I had a look at WatchDisk's Access database, and it would probably take me a day to program a better interface that lets me compare any snapshot, but I don't want to do that, I just want a program that works. Tech Support said that program hasn't had any development for years, so little hope that they'll fix it. Still, it's sort of tempting.

There has to be something out there that does what I want. WatchDisk fixed an emergency situation so brilliantly that I'm surprised there aren't dozens of similar programs around.

I've looked at:
PA WatchDisk
Spiceworks
PA StorageMonitor
Size Explorer Pro
Beyond Compare
Diff Commander
ViceVersa
Diskmonitor
Foldersizes

Has anyone come across any others?

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