Quick Start.pdf

SpaceSniffer QuickStart

17. December 2009

Space Sniffer

Find lost space on your

disks the easy way.

Welcome

“There was so much free space on this disk... why no space left?

Where did I waste all this wonderful free space?”

If you feel this is a deja-vu, SpaceSniffer may help.

In few words:

• Gives you an idea of where big files reside on your disks, even network paths

• Fast and easy to use, simple interface

• No useless bells and whistles, only what's needed to help you find your files

• Lets you easily search with file masks ( *.jpg,*.txt… ), by file size ( >1mb… ), file

age ( <3months… ), attributes ( archive , hidden… ) and combinations

• File tagging

• Gives access to the Windows files/folders popup menu

• Reacts to external disk modifications, keeps always in sync, warns you about

external modifications by elements blinking

• Intuitive navigation with animated zooming effects, even during the scan process

• Multithreaded scanning engine with smart caching system to minimize disk access

• Lets you focus and complete the scanning on a zoomed portion of your disk even if

the master scan is in progress

• Can scan NTFS Alternate Data Streams if needed

• Customizable interface: geometry, colors, behaviors

• It doesn't clutter your registry, only a plain XML configuration file

• It's portable, no installation required, just put the executable somewhere and let's

go. You can keep it in your flash key ready to be used.

• It's FreeWare or, better, DonationWare.

“Hei! Look there! A lot of old 10+Mb JPEGs!”

“Oh! That old 2Gb database backup! Better moving it out of the way!”

“What is this biiiig folder? Oh, that's the O.S. folder. Better leaving it in place, eheh”

Sound interesting to you? So... let's go on!

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SpaceSniffer QuickStart

17. December 2009

Start the application

The main window of the application appears and a smaller dialog (the start dialog) will ask

where you want to scan. You can choose one of your disks or type a path. The path can

be a local path or a network path. It works well also with Samba shares.

Then, press the Enter key or click the Start button.

the start dialog

If you typed in a path and that path does not exist, an error message will appear. If

everything is ok, the scan process begins.

An alternate way to locate the path to scan is to press the Path button on lower left of the

dialog. This will open the O.S. Folder browser. When you select a folder in the folder

browser and confirm, the selected folder path will be copied into the path field.

Then press Start to begin.

It is possible also to drag a folder on the dialog. This will copy the dragged folder path into

the path field. Then press Start to go. You can drag only one folder at a time into this

dialog.

If you want to drag more than one folder you can close the dialog and drag many folders

directly into the main window. This will automatically start as many scan views as the

number of dragged folders.

For your convenience, the dialog is easily usable also with keyboard. If you want the

dialog to close, then press ESC key. When you are in the main window, the CTRL+N

shortcut will reopen the start dialog.

Ok, that was pretty easy. Let's go on.

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SpaceSniffer QuickStart

17. December 2009

The scanning process

The scan progress will be displayed on the main window. This is a real time display of the

scan operation. As you can see, a lot of rectangles appear on the screen.

Each rectangle represents a folder or a file (generically an

element). The folder elements shows other elements into

them, recursively. A limit has been set to the display

recursion, to avoid graphic cluttering. You can change this

limit as you wish with

and

CTRL –

shortcuts

with the toolbar buttons.

Elements change in size proportionally to the real size of the

file or folder.

Note: This type of graphical representation is called

Treemap and was invented by Ben Shneiderman, a Professor

in the University of Maryland. So, the bigger the element on screen, the bigger the folder

or file on disk. It's in-tooi-tive.

If you want to examine an element in deep, just left mouse click

once on it, and you will start digging.

You can dig into folders until you reach a file element (displayed

in a different color).

If you wish, you can zoom into a folder element by double

clicking into it. This will expand the folder to the entire view,

showing more smaller elements previously hidden because of the

smaller size. When you start zooming in and out you will notice

that the navigation keys (back and forward, like a web browser)

activate. You can go back and forth by pressing them or by

BACKSPACE and SHIFT+BACKSPACE shortcuts.

folder nesting

Note: The previously shown navigation shortcuts are active only when the filter field is

not focused.

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CTRL +

the sniffing process

SpaceSniffer QuickStart

17. December 2009

Navigation

You can navigate the disk structure by the tool bar buttons.

In order:

• New view ( CTRL+N ): opens a new scan window. SpaceSniffer lets you open more

windows and watch different parts of your disks. If you open more than once the

same view (or part of it), the disk will be scanned only once. SpaceSniffer features

a smart caching system that links also to the disk event system of the O.S. So if

something changes outside the application, SpaceSniffer will be aware of it and will

reflect the change into the view.

• Go back ( BACKSPACE ) + Go forward ( SHIFT+BACKSPACE ): When you navigate

the disk structure by zooming in and out, all locations you traverse are kept in

memory (like an internet browser). So you can go back and forth as you wish.

• Go upper level ( CTRL+UP ): will zoom out by one folder level, until you reach the

view root.

• Go to home ( CTRL+HOME ): will zoom out at the root point of the view (the disk

drive or the specified initial path)

• Perform a new master scan: While scanning, the button lets you to stop the

process. While not scanning, the button lets you start another scanning process.

• Performs a new scan of the zoomed view: When you are on the view root the

button is disabled. When you are in a zoomed folder, you can start a secondary

scan process to force the scanning of the selected folder. The purpose is to avoid

waiting for the termination of the master scan to be sure the zoomed view is

complete. Only one active zoomed scan process is permitted for each view. If you

want to focus on another part of the structure and the secondary scan is in

progress, you must stop and restart it.

• Less detail ( CTRL - ) + More detail ( CTRL + ): Will dig less/more into the

display structure. Note that the currently selected folder/file element will always be

shown, to avoid you a lot of annoying zoom in/out operations.

• Show free space ( CTRL+F ): will show an element that represents the free space

of the selected drive. This option will work only if you select a drive (or type a drive

path) and not with typed paths that are not drives.

• Show unknown space ( CTRL+U ): similarly to the preceding option, this will show

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SpaceSniffer QuickStart

17. December 2009

unknown space. Unknown space is space that SpaceSniffer is aware of, but has not

examined yet. While the scanning process goes on, the unknown space will

diminish letting space for the examined items. Similar to free space, unknown space

will not be displayed if the root path is not a drive. Sometime after the scan

completes, some unknown space is still visible. This is due to the inability to scan

some protected folders.

• Donate: Press this to connect to the donation page. Please support this software,

let me know that you like it by donating something. Thank you in advance.

The viewable percent bar

When zooming in and out you may notice a small green bar on the left side of the view.

This small green bar will show you how much of the entire structure is currently showing.

If you go to the view root, the bar will fill the vertical space entirely. If you zoom in, the

bar will diminish its height, because you are displaying less and less disk space as you

keep zooming in.

The progress bar

Another item you can notice is the progress bar in the upper right side

of the view. This will show you the scanning progress. Since the total

size to be scanned is known only if you select a drive, the progress bar

is shown only if you select a drive path. In all other cases, a simple

message will be displayed.

full scan in progress

The tagging system

If you want to track files before doing them anything else you can tag them. There are

four different tags: red, yellow, green, blue. Simply hover the mouse on a file and press

CTRL+1 for red tag, CTRL+2 for yellow, CTRL+3 for green and CTRL+4 for blue. By

pressing the same key again you clear the tag (it's an on/off switch).

With CTRL+0 you clear the tag on all filtered files in the zoomed view. This means that

the reset is applied on files starting from the zoomed area (files outside the zoomed area

are left untouched) and only for files that satisfy the filtering rules. So, if you have tagged

files that are hidden due a filtering rule, then they are left untouched.

Since the tag clearing is applied on filtered files, it's impossible to use it while filtering is in

progress (a warning message is displayed) because the effect can be unpredictable.

The CTRL+ digit combinations works always, also if the filter box has the focus. If you

are sure that the filter box is not focused, you can also use the simpler 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 0 key.

By tagging a file you put a temporary “bookmark” on it. This lets

you continue navigating the disk structure and be sure to find

each tagged file by filter, for example. The tag is temporary: This

means that when you close all the views that work on a given disk

or folder path the tagging is lost. Nothing is stored on disk,

everything is kept in ram.

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Tagged and untagged file

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: