Should disk management be a part of XY

surrender · Post by **surrender** » 09 Aug 2006 20:48

I am very often managing 100s of GBs of data. But right now with XY its not very easy get a feel of comparison between different folder sizes. or how much space a subfolder takes up compared to other subfolders? Yeah i am talking about a disk size manager. It somehow comes under file management too. isnt it??
I personally find those pie chart comparisons useful. I dont know if that will bloat the software or not because i have no idea whatsoever. But atleast i have seen a complete software dedicated to disk size management, and on the flip side i have also seen filemanagers with this feature. So do you think its possible to have disk manager within XY?? I would also like to know from other XY fanatics if they would find this useful.

agnul · Post by **agnul** » 09 Aug 2006 21:32

Don't know about integrating it in xy, but if you want to quickly compare the space on disk of different folders you should take a look at sequoia view.

/advertising done

surrender · Post by **surrender** » 09 Aug 2006 22:19

Thanks Agnul. But I am already using Jdiskreport. Guess i am just used to pie charts. I just made this request because I always have to switch between XY and Jdisk and was wondering if XY can give these comparison charts too. I will try sequoia for sure. But lets see what others have to say regarding XY and disk size manager.

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 10 Aug 2006 05:38

I also use JDiskReport! It's one of THE best freeware avail (IMHO) to see where your disk space is being gobbled up by...

Was there a thread some time ago about this topic? I vaguely recall something like it, but as I'm typing a reply, can't easily search...

Anyway, even something like ability to show the percent of total size for each folder in the tree view as JDR does would be a decent compromise, I think..And/Or...having a Percent option in Size Col choices, maybe?

Also, the way JDR shows the number of files within each folder in the tree is quite neat! That would be be a nice option to have in XY!

Post by **admin** » 10 Aug 2006 08:11

j_c_hallgren wrote:Was there a thread some time ago about this topic? I vaguely recall something like it...

There has been the idea to use the tree for this info. Which I think is a good idea since this is typically about folders. One could insert some graphix left or right of each folder icon signalling the state-of-affairs in a pie-charty way: each folder tells graphically his size percentage within the parent folder. Then any biggies cuold very easily be tracked down.

But hmmmm... there is a performance problem: using the tree would mean that all folder sizes of all drives would have to be calculated before the tree (or at least that info) can be displayed. Bad.

OTOH one could do this a task-on-demand similar to Calculate Folder Sizes...

CyGho · Post by **CyGho** » 10 Aug 2006 08:17

admin wrote: OTOH one could do this a task-on-demand similar to Calculate Folder Sizes...

On demand would be good and it will be a nice addition. I use TreeSize Free for this purpose now. When XYplorer can do it, it's again one program less

surrender · Post by **surrender** » 10 Aug 2006 09:18

admin wrote:OTOH one could do this a task-on-demand similar to Calculate Folder Sizes...

Yeah, please make it ONLY on demand. Dont want to kill the speedy XY. And this thing could go under tools menu.

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 10 Aug 2006 09:24

I've used TreeSize also for a looooong time...and found it good but JDR is a bit better in some ways...anyway...

Having feature as "On-Demand" is the only way I'd expect it to be done...

Don, have you seen how the JDR tree display looks? Both % and Nbr?
I'd again suggest this style as step 1...with graphics/charts as step 2.

CyGho · Post by **CyGho** » 10 Aug 2006 10:04

j_c_hallgren wrote:I've used TreeSize also for a looooong time...and found it good but JDR is a bit better in some ways...anyway....

off topic: JDR IS nice, thx, gonna do a review for my site

agnul · Post by **agnul** » 10 Aug 2006 12:41

Yup... JDR is nice. Just had to overcome my gut reaction towards desktop software written in Java. Also what JDR does seemed to be a little too low-level for java... oh well. I learnt about a nice piece of software. Thanks surrender

jacky · Post by **jacky** » 10 Aug 2006 21:39

hmm.... Well, technically putting the graph on the tree could be possible, you could even say you add the graphic-percentage inside the usual Folder icon (coloring it from left to right accordingly)...

But I think that I would like it much better on the List. First, because this is a feature that I would use to see which item uses the more space, compare a few of them, etc and I just feel like it's more natural to have all thoose done from within the List...

Secondly, having it on the list allow you to use this feature with a few of XY's other ones, like choosing the sort order, or apply Visual Filters, which might come in handy!

If you ask me, I would think the "best way" to do it would be to add another column on the List, something like "Distribution", that would tell how much each items represent with their parent.

Something like this:

When the column is shown, it would of course only be filled for files (just like the Size column) unless the Folder'size is known (Calculate Folder Sizes, or adding one size manually through the Properties tab

)
(ie it's based on the total size announce in the statusbar)

This means, if you do not have "calculate folder sizes" enabled, at first you know how much each files represents within all the files of the current folder; and if you do "Calculate Folder Sizes" then its a whole as TreeSize & others do.

Post by **admin** » 10 Aug 2006 22:26

Yeah, nice. Similar to these ideas:
http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?t=532

surrender · Post by **surrender** » 14 Aug 2006 20:46

I got a wierd thing to ask. Do you think i can see the pie chart in the preview tab of info panel if i click a folder in the list?? Isnt seeing whats inside a folder without opening it also a kind of preview?? Just wondering if its too wierd or alright.

Edit: it need not be a pie chart to be frank, it can be any kind of visual info of the folder size and what makes up its content.

Post by **admin** » 15 Aug 2006 08:00

surrender wrote:I got a wierd thing to ask. Do you think i can see the pie chart in the preview tab of info panel if i click a folder in the list?? Isnt seeing whats inside a folder without opening it also a kind of preview?? Just wondering if its too wierd or alright.

Edit: it need not be a pie chart to be frank, it can be any kind of visual info of the folder size and what makes up its content.

That would be a possibility... not sure whether it's a good one.

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 18 Oct 2006 09:44

Due to some comments in another thread, I decided to re-look at the docs for xplorer2, (which I use the free 'lite' vers of, as it's often enough), and was looking at Folder Statistics on pg 151...as kinda stated before, this type of display would be QUITE helpful to have in XY!

Essentially what it does is on the tree, after each folder, it shows within brackets the total size of folder, followed by "Sub-folders=xx, Files=xx" type display so one can locate those folders with a large nbr of files/folders.

x2 has this as a feature for the PAID vers only, so I can't use it, but I could see where Xy could not only add this, but do something that I haven't spotted in x2 docs: The ability to search for folders with certain criteria, such as "greater than 60 sub-folders" or "greater than 200 files" or "folder size between 5MB and 20MB", etc.