Request: File System Enhancement, Folder Size !!!!

[Skybuck Flying]

Hi,

Windows Explorer is unable to display the folder size. ( total size of all
sub folders and sub files ).

This means users are BLIND !!!

This means users have absolutely no clue what so ever how much space each
folder takes up.

After years of usage and installing and removing files one slowly forgets
what is in each folder.

When a user needs to free space he has no clue what to delete effectively...
(deleting the stuff that takes most space).

Inspecting every folder via properties would take way to long !

Someone has written a dll called: DirSize.dll.

It's a plugin for windows explorer. When clicking on the column header one
can select 'show folder size'. From that moment on the folder size is
calculated for each folder. The harddisk has to seek a lot... It takes many
minutes to calculate it !

This is clearly a short comming of many file systems including NTFS !

The problem is ofcourse with browsing the files... it now just takes way too
long and the harddisk is spinning to much !

I think the problem can be solved by enhancing the file system or be
creating a new one (new ntfs version maybe ?).

I propose that from now on... the total size of each folder is stored in a
64 bit (unsigned) integer.

Each time that files are added, removed or changed the total size of the
folder and all subfolders should be recalculated... or if that is
undesirable because many files have to be changed... then the folder and all
parent folders should be marked as 'recalculate'.

Then some other service... could run in the background... scanning for root
folders that are marked for 'recalculate'... and recalculate them...
something like that.

It should do this slowly or so... or some new api has to be created so that
programmers can say: 'hey I am going to change many files...don't calculate
yet until I am done etc' for installation programs .

The concept of having a file browser like windows explorer and being able to
see all folders and their space requirements is worth 'GOLD'.

Now it's up to microsoft to take this 'GOLD' concept and create a 'SILVER'
or 'GOLD' implementation =D

So that when users are browsing their harddisk and are viewing hundreds of
folders it only takes a fraction of a second to display all folder sizes...
since it can now easily retrieve just this 64 bit integer number without
having to seek or calculate anything... that has already been done over
time...

Please forward this to microsoft

Bye, bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Mark Dormer]

If you let the mouse hang over the folder it will give yopu the size in a
popup.

To turn this on go into folder options--view
and check
Display file size information in folder tips
and
Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items

Regards
Mark Dormer

 

[Alex Nichol]

Windows Explorer is unable to display the folder size. ( total size of all
sub folders and sub files ).

This means users are BLIND !!!

You can right click any folder and take Properties.

Also if in Folder Options - View you have 'Display file size information
in folder tips' and 'show pop-up descriptions for folder and desktop
items' both checked, then hovering the cursor over a folder will show
the total size,and the names of a few leading items in it

 

[skybuck]

If you let the mouse hang over the folder it will give yopu the size in a
popup.

To turn this on go into folder options--view
and check
Display file size information in folder tips
and
Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items

Regards
Mark Dormer

Hmm never knew that...

Well thx for the tip... BUT it's useless... since it shows an estimate
which is totally wrong: 'larger than 17 MB'.

In reality most folders are huge !

Maybe it's because I have some service turned off... or maybe the
functionality is just crappy =D

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Mark Dormer]

It is true, it is not accurate on certain folders. It works best with
smaller ones.

You might like to try this
http://www.codeproject.com/shell/DirectorySize.asp

Download the demo project
Put the .dll file in the system directory...c:\windows\system32
Now register it..
I the run box type regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\DirSize.dll
Now open an explorer window, right click the bar in the folder window that
has Name, Size, Directory etc and add Folder Size.

You can now see folder size for every folder, and it is accurate
It does an excellent job.

Regards
Mark Dormer

 

[Alex Nichol]

Download the demo project
Put the .dll file in the system directory...c:\windows\system32
Now register it..
I the run box type regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\DirSize.dll
Now open an explorer window, right click the bar in the folder window that
has Name, Size, Directory etc and add Folder Size.

You can now see folder size for every folder, and it is accurate
It does an excellent job.

But - it expresses the sizes in bytes, but refers to KB. So an exact 3
MB folder is referred to as 3145728 KB. which is wrong, and also tricky
to be sure whether it is 3 MB or 32 MB at a glance. Program Files
expressed to the byte without punctuation is cumberous

Note that the size shown is the sum of the data in the folder; rather
than the size on disk occupied by its clusters - this can be quite a bit
bigger with a folder of small files