There's no question that disk storage has gotten cheaper. In 1982 I
paid a whopping $550 for a 160Kb floppy disk drive (and that didn't
include a floppy disk!). I don't even want to do the math on the cost
per gigabyte.
Even so there's still a financial and physical limit on how much storage
you can add and given the number of users and the size of files these
days managing disk space is more critical than it's ever been from the
home user to LAN and enterprise administrators.
There's nothing worse than putting more storage online and coming in
Monday morning to find it's all been used....which is exactly the reason
that Disk Triage was written; giving you the tools to find out where
space is being used and allowing you to easily manage that space.
Disk Triage isn't a toy; it's loaded with all kinds of features and
it'll take you more than a couple of minutes of using it to appreciate
all the tools it brings to the task. Disk Triage comes in three
versions; personal, professional and enterprise but the trail version is
neat in that it allows you to run all three versions from the same
download. I encourage you to download the single executable and try all
three versions but there's a table of the differences between the three
version available
here.
Out of the gate Disk Triage first wants to scan drive(s) to see what's
there. You can easily include/exclude specific files type (want to see
how many MP3 files are on the server?) and directories.
The scan is amazing fast and sets you up to use the output feature.
Output is available in a number of forms from overall graphs down to
detailed lists that you can output to hardcopy, Excel or even in HTML.
Above I've selected the last access date option and will output the info
as an Excel spreadsheet. Analysis is available using a bunch of
different options; file size, attribute, date, time, owner, file type,
extension, largest, oldest and even size of file name.
Detail is available for all files that match the search criteria and it
gives you all the info you'd get in Windows Explorer plus file
compressed size and creation/last access dates.
Speaking of Windows Explorer Disk Triage is tightly integrated with
Explorer. After Disk Triage is installed you need only right click a
folder in Explorer and select the option "Analyze directory with Disk
Triage" and bang, Disk Triage opens and you're ready to go. Plus you can
use the Explorer popup menu in both the Disk Triage Tree View and File
List so you can manage files or directories directly from Disk Triage.
I should mention a feature available in the Enterprise version; you can
save sizing info to a database and use Disk Triage to compare/show disk
space growth over time.
Pricing runs $29.95 for the personal version, $99.95 for the
professional version and $199.95 for the enterprise version. The trial
version is fully functional and will allow you to check out all the
features.
And I do recommend you check out all the features; there are far more
than I've covered here and Disk Triage is one of those programs you'll
want to spend some time with to discover all the features that apply to
your particular needs.
Without question I've added Disk Triage to my indispensable utilities
tools. If you want to get a handle on how your disk space is being used
I think you will as well.
