FOLDER SIZE REPORTING

Today we released FolderSizes 9.3 – a minor version update that’s free for all v9 license holders.

So what’s new in this release? First and foremost, FolderSizes v9.3 includes official support for Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022.

We’ve also updated product icons throughout the user interface, along with a number of other general (mostly minor) theme improvements. As an example of the latter, the File Reporter window’s toolbar has been streamlined and consumes far less vertical space. We’ve also improved text clarity in a number of areas.

For more info, see the release notes page of our website. Or perhaps you’d rather skip right to the new version download?

As always, your feedback regarding this new release is most welcome.

Personal and business computing security has been on everyone’s mind as of late, and for good reason – the Internet is full of very real dangers.

In this blog post, I’d like to briefly discuss one aspect of Key Metric Software’s ongoing customer security strategy – ensuring the safety of the software products themselves. And for most, this means keeping our software products free from malware and adware.

The second of these (adware) comes down to commitment – we’d never use adware mechanisms as a means of monetizing our software products. Nor do we need to because if you build products that work well, people will pay a reasonable price for them.

Preventing the proliferation of malware to our customers is a much more serious challenge, and one we take very seriously. But first, a point of clarification – we can only control our own software distribution channels. As such, you should only download Key Metric Software products from our product websites.

Concerning the technical challenges of remaining malware-free, we utilize an array of tools and technologies for this purpose. Using FolderSizes as an example, we start with a hardened software build environment that produces software components signed with an Extended Validation certificate. The resulting installer package (which is also EV signed) is uploaded to a secure host that is monitored continuously. We also run release builds through multiple malware detection engines. For example, here’s the VirusTotal scan result for the latest version of FolderSizes at the time of this writing.

I’ll discuss other aspects of our customer security strategy in future posts. In the meantime, please stay safe and always download software products from a trusted source – directly from the vendor whenever possible, as we have a vested interest in keeping our customers safe.

Some software tools, including our FolderSizes disk space analyzer, are capable of reporting two size metrics for each file system object it encounters – “size” and “allocated size” (the latter is sometimes also called “size on disk”). In this blog entry, I will discuss what these metrics represent and how they differ.

Disk space is allocated to files in units called clusters. The size of a cluster can vary depending upon several factors, including what file system is used (NTFS, FAT32, etc.) and partition size. Most people today running the Microsoft Windows operating system are using NTFS, which has a default cluster size of 4K (4096 bytes).

Since all files are stored within one or more clusters, their “size on disk” (allocated size) is always a multiple of the file system’s cluster size. For example, if you are using NTFS with a 4K cluster size, any file containing between 1 and 4096 bytes of data will consume a single cluster. Any file containing between 4097 and 8192 bytes will use two clusters. And so on.

As a result, any file that has a size which is not an exact multiple of the file system’s cluster size (and the vast majority aren’t) will “waste” a portion of its last cluster. Therefore, a file’s “allocated” size will usually be larger than its actual size. This wasted space is generally referred to as “cluster overhang” or “disk slack.” Some tools (including FolderSizes) can also report upon cluster overhang for folders (directories).

A rough estimate of wasted space for a volume can be calculated by multiplying the number of files it contains by half the cluster size. So, for example, if an NTFS file system with 4K clusters contains 50,000 files, the estimated wasted space would be about 97MB of disk space.

Other factors, such as file system compression can also affect the computation of allocated space.

FolderSizes v9.1 has been released and is now available for download. There are a few notable changes in this build that we’d like to review.

First, we’ve made dozens of user interface enhancements that include the re-introduction of a dark theme (by popular request) and improvements to existing themes. We’ve also improved the scaling of UI elements for high-resolution monitors – including revised icons, enhancements to the installer, better print scaling, and much more.

There are many changes “under the hood” as well, including improved behavior when analyzing DFS shares, improved PDF exports, and various bug fixes.

And finally, the minimum Windows OS requirements have been updated to Windows 7 SP1 or later (or Windows Server 2012 R2 or later). Anyone needing support for older operating systems (Windows Vista, Server 2008) can still download and install the previous FolderSizes v9.0 release.

P.S. We also recently released Permissions Reporter v3 – a major version upgrade to our world-class NTFS permissions reporting solution. We hope you’ll give it a try.

FolderSizes v9 enhances the product installer to allow customers to apply a license key during (optionally silent) installation.

To use this feature, invoke the FolderSizes v9 installer with the following syntax:

“fs9-setup.exe” LICENSE_CODE=”XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX”

In practice, it will usually be necessary to fully qualify the path to the installer executable. For example:

“c:\myfolder\fs9-setup.exe” LICENSE_CODE=”XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX”

Note that you can combine this capability with one of the following silent installation flags:

– basic UI: /qb (only a progress bar will be shown during the installation)
– no UI: /qn (no UI will be showed during the installation)

And now a final example that installs FolderSizes 9 silently and applies a license key:

“c:\myfolder\fs9-setup.exe” LICENSE_CODE=”XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX” /qn