SpaceSniffer User Manual.pdf
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Space
Sniffer
User Manual
printed on 11/01/2012
Space
Sniffer
"Find lost space on your disks the easy way."
Copyright © 2007-2012 Uderzo Umberto –
www.uderzo.it
1 . W e l c o m e
1.1 - What's that?
It may happen that a day you discover your compter disk is nearly full.
And you have no
clue "why"
. The main purpose of Space
Sniffer
is to help you to dig into the content of your
computer storage media,
the easy way
. The approach is to hilight big files. This is done by
drawing each file and folder with a shape sized proportionally to its occupation.
The bigger on screen, the bigger on disk. This helps in finding what's eating your storage.
To better help in your quest, a versatile filtering system is available. You can search by file
and folder name, extension, size, dates, attributes and even more.
In few words:
•
Easy find where big files reside on your storage, even network paths.
•
Fast and simple to use, simple interface easy to understand.
•
Lets you easily search with file masks (
*.jpg,*.txt
…), by file size (
>1mb
…), file
age (
<3months
…), attributes (
archive, hidden
…), folder names (
\temp,
\*internet*
), combinations, negations and more.
•
File and folder tagging, lets you bookmark elements for later processing.
•
Direct access to the Windows Explorer files/folders popup menu with mouse right
click.
•
Reacts to external storage modifications, keeps always in sync, warns you about
external modifications by elements blinking. Discover created/modified files in real
time!
•
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 scan on a zoomed portion of your disk even if the
master scan is in progress (
if you are in hurry
).
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Sniffer
User Manual
printed on 11/01/2012
•
Scans NTFS Alternate Data Streams if needed.
•
Customizable interface: geometry, colors, behaviors, effects, look, styles.
•
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 use.
•
It's FreeWare. Better, it's DonationWare.
By using Space
Sniffer
, you may say:
“Hei! Look there! A lot of old 10+Mb JPEGs!”
“Oh! That old 2Gb database backup! Better moving it out of the way!”
"Look here! The application XYZ modifies all those files!"
“What is this biiiig folder? Oh, that's the O.S. folder. Better leaving it in place, eheh”
2 . Q u i c k S t a r t P a g e
Please have a look at the
Quick Start page
. You will find information about the tool bar that
is not covered here. You should find the
Quick Start page
into the same package where
you found this document.
3 . S t a r t T h e A p p l i c a t i o n
The main window of the application appears and a smaller dialog (the start dialog) will ask
what you want to scan. You can choose one of your disks or type one or more paths
(separated by "
;
" char). Paths can be local or network paths. It works well also with
Samba shares. You can navigate your media structure by pressing the
Path
button, or
drag'n drop one or more folders on the start dialog to avoid typing. Then, press the
Enter
key or click the
Start
button.
If you typed a path and that path does not exist, an error message will appear. If
everything is ok, the scan process begins, the start dialog will close (you can reopen it
later) and one or more scan views will appear. You can also drag one or more folders
directly on the main window, avoiding the start dialog.
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Sniffer
User Manual
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For your convenience, the start 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 it.
4 . T h e S c a n P r o c e s s
The scan progress will be displayed on the main window. This is a real time display of the
scan operation. Lots of rectangles appear on the screen.
Each rectangle represents a folder or a file (
generically an element
). Folder elements show
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
CTRL +
and
CTRL –
shortcuts or with dedicated 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
Prof.
Ben Shneiderman
, Professor in the University of Maryland. The bigger the element on
screen, the bigger the folder or file on disk. Simple.
4.1 - Seeing stuff in detail
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). When you click on a folder or file, it will be hilighted and it will drop a shadow to
make it easy to track during a scan operation (because Space
Sniffer
is continuosly
rearraging and moving all elements to best fit them in your screen).
If you wish, you can zoom into a folder element by
double clicking on it
. This will expand
the folder to the entire view, showing more smaller elements previously hidden because of
their small size. When you start zooming in and out you will notice that the navigation keys
(
back
and
forward
, like a web browser) will activate. You can go back and forth by
pressing them or by
BACKSPACE
and
SHIFT+BACKSPACE
shortcuts.
Note:
The navigation keyboard shortcuts are active only when the filter field is not
focused
4.2 - What does Space
Sniffer
display?
Due to the intrinsic nature of the Treemap concept, Space
Sniffer
will not show files with
zero byte size. Because the display area is proportional to the file size, a zero size file
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Sniffer
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would occupy zero pixels, hence they are not displayed.
Note:
There are particular cases when a zero byte length file is displayed. This happens
only when you have zoomed into a folder that contains a zero length file. But also this
condition is transient. Anyway, the mission of Space
Sniffer
is to find big guys, so this
should not be a real issue.
Note:
Due to the limited available screen area, also smaller elements are not displayed.
You can configure the minimum size of an element to be shown into the view, anyway
there are cases with lots of elements that cannot be fully displayed. This doesn't mean that
Space
Sniffer
ignores such elements. It always takes them into consideration but it just
doesn't display them. If you cannot discover them by zooming into, you can find them by
the export function (see next chapters). Once again, Space
Sniffer
is to find big guys so,
you are warned...
5 . N a v i g a t i o n
You can navigate the disk structure by the tool bar buttons. Please refer to the
Quick Start
for a visual representation of the user interface. The following commands are available, in
order:
5.1 - New view (
CTRL+N
)
Opens the Start Dialog, letting you start with a new scan view. Space
Sniffer
lets you open
more windows and watch different parts of your disks. If you open more than once the
same path (or part of it), the disk will be scanned only once. Space
Sniffer
features a smart
caching system that links also to the
disk event system
of the O.S. So if something
changes outside the application, Space
Sniffer
will be aware of it and will reflect the
change into the view.
Hint:
You can open twice the same path on two different views and examine it with
different filtering criteria.
5.2 - 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.
5.3 - Go upper level (
CTRL+UP
)
Will zoom out by one folder level, until you reach the view root. The view root is the
starting point of the scan operation (the disk drive or the specified initial path).
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Sniffer
User Manual
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5.4 - Go to home (
CTRL+HOME
)
Will zoom out at the root point of the view (the disk drive or the specified initial path).
5.5 - Perform a new master scan
While scanning, the button lets you to stop the process. While not scanning, the button lets
you start another scan process.
Hint:
If you need to track only file change operations and you are not interested in the
full media content, a full media scan is not needed. Just start a new scan then stop it with
this button. Even if not scanning, Space
Sniffer
will keep track of created/deleted/modified
files and you will see them popping into your view. This feature is available only where the
O.S. disk event system can detect file changes, so it likely won't work on network drives,
for example.
5.6 - Performs a new scan of the zoomed view (sub scan)
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.
Hint:
Both master scan and sub scan are not really needed to keep the view in sync
with media content if the O.S. gives modification feedbacks. This usually happens with
local medie storage, as said previously. If, on the other hand, you are dealing with a
network path for example, you should rescan totally or partially to keep in sync.
5.7 - 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.
5.8 - Use File Classes style (
CTRL+T
)
Will switch between
Flat Colors
style and
File Classes
style. When you feel
overhelmed by too much information you can "
go back flat
" and take a breath.
5.9 - 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.
Note:
The free space element is visible only in the root element, if you zoom into a
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