Redundant Application Data folder

[Guest]

In the Local Settings directory of my username I have have 12 Application
Data folders. One inside the other and so on. Its about 12 gigs of what seems
to be completely redundant data.

There are other places that have reduntant Application Data folderes
equaling similar amounts of space. Can I just delete all but the outermost
ones? Seems pretty excessive. I might have something like 20-30 gigs of
redundant files.

Is this a bug or a new way of doing things?
--


(¯`·._.·Ecat·._.·´¯)
HP a1230n
Athlon 64 Processor 3800+
1 Gig RAM
Radeon X700

 

[Guest]

How are you viewing the space taken up and the directories within those
"folders"? These aren't even folders, they're junctions (like symlinks in
Linux), that directs one folder to another for compatibility reasons i.e. I
think Application Data points to AppData and Local Settings to ProgramData.

It's possible that it's a bug, after all it's a beta, especially if you
choose to change the permissions to view them in explorer. However, it's
even more likely that if you used a 3rd party application, it's just
interpreting it incorrectly.

 

[Guest]

To see the total size of the folders with folders inside them etc, I was
using ExplorerXP which an Win Explorer type program. One of the great things
about it is it can tell you the total size of directories, including when
there are directories inside of them and so on. Not sure if that made sense.
Never understood why windows coulnt do that. Its just math isnt it?

Ive since realized that its not that acurate with Vista though. It reports
some directories as being larger than my whole Vista partition. Its great on
XP thougjh. Really handy.

As a test I changed the name of the application data directory and it
changed the names of all of the application data directories inside of
itself. So I guess theyre not actually multiples but different states of
themselves or something. Kind of like turning a tv camera back at the tv.
--


(¯`·._.·Ecat·._.·´¯)
HP a1230n
Athlon 64 Processor 3800+
1 Gig RAM
Radeon X700


:

 

[Jimmy Brush]

Your interpretation is correct.

The Local Settings folder is a junction that points to the AppData\Local\
folder. Programs that aren't junction aware (such as the program you are
using) do not realize that this redirection is taking place.

Unfortunately, there is another junction inside the AppData\Local\ folder
(the "Application Data" junction) that also points to AppData\Local\. This
creates a hall-of-mirrors effect, as you have seen.

- JB

 

[Guest]

To see the total size of the folders with folders inside them etc, I was
using ExplorerXP which an Win Explorer type program. One of the great things
about it is it can tell you the total size of directories, including when
there are directories inside of them and so on. Not sure if that made sense.
Never understood why windows coulnt do that. Its just math isnt it?

I've never had any problems seeing the total size of a folder, just
select it and press Alt+Enter or right-click and select Properties. If
you mean that in explorer you don't see the size of the directory in the
status-bar it's because it's slow. If you have a directory with many
sub-directories/files each of those would have to be checked which would
mean a lot of reads from disk and that can take quite a while. The
alternative is to cache the information but that's a bit too much work
for information that is relatively seldom of interest.

 

[Guest]

Hmm, never occured to me to check properties of a specific directory. And I
knew that properties had that info too but I just never put two and two
together, lol. ExplorerXP is still better for that in some cases like getting
ready to dump a bunch of stuff onto a dvd etc. Because it has a colum for it
so you can see all the results at once.that But it does take a little extra
time while its addig up all the sub-directories. Not much though.

On a related note, when selecting a directory that has for example 12 files
totaling 100mb, you dont see that on the right of the status bar like you
used to You have to select them first and then it will tell you. Is this a
bug or an incomplete feature or maybe a new way of doing things now?
--


(¯`·._.·Ecat·._.·´¯)
HP a1230n
Athlon 64 Processor 3800+
1 Gig RAM
Radeon X700

 

[Alan Simpson]

In Vista you just have to point to a folder to see its size.

 

[Guest]

Well it doesnt work that way for me. ) :

Heres how my status bar looks when pointing a folder:
20 items (Disk free space: 2.96 GB) Computer

But it should look like this:
20 items (Disk free space: 2.96 GB) 7.25 MB Computer

I have to actually select the files on the right side of Explorer to see
their total.

Oh well.
--


(¯`·._.·Ecat·._.·´¯)
HP a1230n
Athlon 64 Processor 3800+
1 Gig RAM
Radeon X700

 

[Guest]

Well it doesnt work that way for me. ) :

Heres how my status bar looks when pointing a folder:
20 items (Disk free space: 2.96 GB) Computer

But it should look like this:
20 items (Disk free space: 2.96 GB) 7.25 MB Computer

I have to actually select the files on the right side of Explorer to see
their total.

Alan was talking about the tool-tip box that comes up if you hover the
mouse over a folder, which is a feature that was in XP too, I'd just
forgotten about it. The statusbar only shows info for selected objects.