It is really appalling to me that this is still happening.  After all, the focus of your PC has for too long appeared to be Windows itself, but it just isn’t.  The main focus of your PC is your files and documents surely!

Windows is designed to be installed on single disk systems, it’s always been that way.  You install Windows onto your C: drive and a folder will be created for your files.  Your ‘personal’ folders will automatically be stored there (Documents, Pictures, Music and the like) and any new files you copy over to your PC will be put there.

The problem is that as and when something goes wrong with Windows, which is inevitable eventually, you risk losing all your files and data if you don’t keep regular backups.  I get emails from people all the time asking for help with this and how they can get their data back, or at least not lose it to begin with.

Now you’re probably saying at this point that people should always keep regular backups of their data, and you won’t get any argument from me.  It’s not always that simple though, especially if you have a lot of critical files that change regularly.  There are also personal, financial or other circumstances that mean people won’t have regular backups or backups at all.  Let’s not forget that while Windows 7 might nag you to back up your files, millions of people are still using Windows XP and Vista which don’t, and most of those people and the people using Windows 7 aren’t technically minded and may not even know what this means.

This should therefore mean that Microsoft need to guide people and help them to keep their files and data safe.  They’ve made precious little progress here in the last decade though, having only added the ability with Windows Vista to cut and paste your ‘user folders’ to another location easily.  There’s no indication you can actually do this however, no help on the matter and no nagging from the Windows 7 Action Centre to remind you to do so.

With Windows 8 I’m beginning to feel the gloom setting in that nothing more will change.  What we desperately need is one of the following two scenarios but I’m doubtful somehow that either will happen.

Scenario 1 : Separation at Installation- It wouldn’t be too difficult for the Windows installer to ask you, when times comes to install Windows.  “Do you want to install Windows and your user files onto this 1Tb hard disk in your computer or would you like to separate them”, before going onto explain why seperating them is a good idea.

The installer could then do one of the following, ask what you want to use your computer for (light use, music and photos, work, gaming) and create two partitions of recommended size.  Alternatively it could split the hard drive by proportion, 50/50, 30/70 and so on or finally it could ask you what size you want the two partitions to be and make recommendations to you.

All of these options would be simple enough for people to understand and it would be easy and simple for the Windows installer, on a clean install anyway, to do this for you.

Scenario 2 : Separation after Installation – Windows already has the ability to grow and shrink partitions.  Why doesn’t it suggest to you after you install it through an Action Centre message that “You can greatly decrease the chances of losing files and data by moving them away from Windows, would you like to do this now?”

Here there would again be several options.  It could shrink the current Windows Partition and then move the user folders for you.  Alternatively, if you have a separate hard disk it could simply move the user files there.  It’s easy for Windows to determine what is internal and external storage so this wouldn’t be at all difficult.  This would also mean that if you’re reinstalling and have already moved the folders in the past, the pointers will be updated in Windows to where you’ve put them.

Are either of these scenarios likely to happen though?  Moving your files and folders away from your Windows installation is something I feel very strongly about and it’s something I write about at some length in my book Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out. 

There are ways to make sure you don’t ever lose your files and data (unsurprisingly I write about those as well, and will write additional articles on the subject here in the coming weeks) but in the mean time keep the emails coming to mike@MVPs.org.

Although you won’t find all of the standard features found in most modern file managers, you will find emelFM2 has a few tricks of its own that make it worth (at least) giving a try. And, of course, any old school user will be happy to have this file manager sitting alongside the standard Nautilus, Dolphin, or Thunar.

In this Ghacks article I will show you how to install and make use of the emelFM2 file manager.

Installation

Since emelFM2 is a GTK+ toolkit it’s fairly universal on X11 systems. I found emelFM2 in both the standard repositories for Ubuntu 10.04 and Fedora 13. So installation can be as simple as:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “emelfm2″ (no quotes).
3. Mark emelFM2 for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

Once installed, you will find emelFM2 in Start > System Tools > emelFM2.

Usage

Figure 1

When you start up emelFM2 the window that greets you will look very familiar (see Figure 1). If you’ve ever used Midnight Commander or even an FTP application like gFTP, you will be immediately at home with emelFM2.

Let’s say you want to move a file (or directory) from one location to another. To do so you would navigate on the left pane to the source, select the file (or folder), navigate on the right to the target, and then click the Move button in the middle of the panes.

Or say you want to just open a file. To do this you would navigate to the location of the file on either the left or right pane, and double click the file to open it. You could also right-click the file and select from any number of actions (such as change ownership, change permissions, copy, link, link-as, delete, and more).

Other features

Naturally, a tool like this would need some other features to make it attractive. And emelFM2 doesn’t disappoint. One of the nice handier features of emelFM2 is the built-in command line tool. at the bottom of the window you will see a small text area (see Figure 1). This text area allows you to enter commands that will be enacted upon the selected file.

You can also calculate disk usage of items. You might be asking yourself why this would be useful, since the file size is already displayed in the main panes. The disk usage tool allows you to calculate the exact file size of either a single file or multiple files. With this you can select multiple files and the click the disk usage button (bottom section of the window, eighth icon from the right) to give you the total amount used by the selected files.

emelFM2 also allows you to mount/unmount devices. To unmount a device you would select the device in either pane and then click the unmount icon (fourth button from the right near the bottom of the window). To mount a device you use the same process.

emelFM2 also has an interesting take on the filtering task. If you click the Filter icon (top right, third from the right for the right pane, top left, third from the left for the left pane) a drop-down will appear allowing you to select from:

• Name Filter
• Size Filter
• Date Filter
• Directories too

When you select any of he top three a new window will open allowing you to create a specific filter. For example, if you want to filter only files modified since a specific date, you would do the following:

Select the Date Filter

In the resulting window select “modified since” from the drop-down.

Enter the date you want to specify.

Click OK.

Figure 2

As soon as you click OK the directory will be refreshed to show only the results that match your filter. You will know when a directory is being filtered because the filter icon will have a line slashed through it (see Figure 2).

Final thoughts

Although many users might find emelFM2 a bit out-dated, anyone that was weened on the likes of Midnight Commander will find themselves right at home with this fast, light file manager. And with a few extra features rolled in, emelFM2 is an attractive alternative to the usual fare.

The program is straightforward to use. It begins by displaying a folder browser to select the root folder that contains the files that the user wants to move into subdirectories. The number of files per subdirectory need to be specified in the second and last step of the process.

The software program will then move all files that are stored in the root folder into subdirectories. The folders are numbered starting by 1.

Dir split is a specialized application that can be downloaded from the developer’s website over at Codeplex. It is compatible with most 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems including Windows 7.

Drive Sort on the other hand can do that as well plus display the newest files of a folder or hard drive which can come in handy in numerous occasions.

The portable software program for the Windows operating system will display either the 100 newest or 100 largest files of the selected folder or drive.

Both operations can be completed in two steps. The computer user needs to select a drive letter or folder of a local hard drive first and then if Drive Sort shall sort the files by size or date.

The process completes in a few seconds, sometimes more than that depending on the files stored in the selected folder or on the hard drive.

The top 100 files are then displayed in the program’s interface with their filename, size, date of creation and file path. A double-click on a file will open it with the default viewer, a right-click can be used to either open the files as well or open the folder containing the selected file.

Drive Sort is a tiny 9 Kilobyte application that is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The software can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website.

In this article you will learn how to install and use ACL to further enchance your file permissions on a Linux system.

Installation

Let’s install ACL on a Ubuntu system. Since this is a command line tool, we’ll do the installation from the command line. And since ACL will be found in the standard repository, you won’t have to monkey with your /etc/apt/sources.list file. From the command line enter the following:

sudo apt-get install acl

Type your user password, hit the Enter key and the install, and the installation will begin and end fairly quickly. You are now ready to start with ACL.

Using ACL

Before you use the commands for ACL you actually have to mount your partition such that ACL is available. By default this is not the case. In order to set this you have to edit your /etc/fstab file. Open that file up and look for the line that mounts your data partition. In my case, this line is:

UUID=c7812a34-3ec1-4451-aace-02d122b6c454 /   ext4  errors=remount-ro 0 1

You need to edit this line to look something like:

UUID=c7812a34-3ec1-4451-aace-02d122b6c454 /   ext4 errors=remount-ro,acl 0 1

After you make this edit, save the file and then either issue the command:

sudo mount -o remount,acl /

or reboot your machine.

There are two commands you will use for ACL:

• setfacl – Set file access control list.
• getfacl – Get file access control list.

You can probably guess that the first command sets the the ACL and the second lists the ACL for the file.

Using ACL

So let’s say you have the file test and you want only two users on your system to be able to read that file, jlwallen and wookie. You want to exclude all users in the group jlwallen as well.  What you want to do is use the setfacl command like so (as the user jlwallen):

setfacl -m u:wookie:rw- test

Now when you run the command:

getfacl test

you will see something like:

# file: test

# owner: jlwallen

# group: jlwallen

user::rw-

user:wookie:rw-

group::r–

mask::rw-

other::r–

As you can see both users jlwallen and wookie can read and write to the file test, whereas all others can only read the file.

You can verify that a file has had ACL modifications done to it by using the ls command like so:

ls -l test

which should produce results like:

-rw-rw-r–+ jlwallen jlwallen

What gives this away is the “+” character.

Final thoughts

Although this is just a cursory glance as using ACL, it will get you started with gaining even further control of the security of your Linux files. We’ll revisit ACL later and take the security of Linux files even further.

Namedate is Roman’s choice to tackle that problem. It can add date and time information to files and folders which makes it a very convenient solution for storing different program versions in the same directory structure.

Namedate is on the other hand a command line utility and as such needs to be run from the command line. It comes with dozens of parameters that can add and edit the filename of specified files and folders. The developer’s homepage lists all the available commands. The basic command is namedate filename which will add the day, month and year to the end of the specified filename.

Experienced users might want to add Namedate to the Windows Explorer right-click menu to add dates to files directly in Windows Explorer without having to open a command line to do so. Namedate is a 40 Kilobyte portable software program that can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with most Windows operating systems including Windows 7. (thanks Roman for the tip)

It all begins at a website or server. This is the starting point and it might be a good idea to start validating that server before even thinking about downloading files from there. This can be done manually by performing some searches in search engines but also automatically with browser add-ons or plugins like Web of Trust, McAfee’s Site Advisor and a plethora of other respected programs including local security software that can also check websites and servers.

The second step involves downloading the file to the local computer system. There is not a lot that can be done here in this step. The only defense are security software programs that are installed on the computer system that should scan the file and report back to the user if they believe it to be malicious. Cautious users can also use one of the many online virus scanners to upload the file and scan it online. Services like Virus Total scan the files with more than a dozen different up to date antivirus engines resulting in a more precise analysis of the file.

Another option is to check the hash values of the downloaded files to make sure that they have not been tampered with. This only makes sense if the developer is displaying the values on a trusted website.

It is pretty safe to assume that the file is safe and can be executed on the computer system if it did pass the tests. There is however a last step that can be done to add the extra mile of security: Virtualization. Programs like Sandboxie or VMWare Player make it possible to execute programs in a closed environment for testing purposes. The benefit of this approach is that they cannot harm the rest of the computer system if they should be malicious.

Did we leave something out? Let us know in the comments.

Watch 4 Folder is a lightweight software program to monitor folders in Windows. The program can be configured to monitor one main folder for the following six different types of changes:

• file name changes
• directory name changes
• attribute changes
• size changes
• last modification date changes
• security changes

It can furthermore write all changes to a log file and execute a script or program if changes are detected. The computer program uses less than 4 Megabytes of computer memory while running. The developer did not include a list of compatible operating systems. It worked fine in Windows XP SP3 and will probably work as well in older and newer versions of the Windows operating system.

Duplicate file finders like Duplicate Cleaner aid the user in finding duplicate files. The software program has been designed to scan a computer system thoroughly for duplicate files. It provides access to a file search but also to a specialized music search in its interface. The music search will scan mp3, wma, ogg, flac and ape files on the computer system and compare artists, titles and albums in the meta tags plus the usual file size and file name. Files on the other hand can be checked for various parameters including crc, name, file size and date.

Specific folders and partitions can be added to the scan which will create three listings in the end. One will display the duplicate files found in the selected folders, another will display all zero byte files and the last will display all files that have been scanned by the program.

A selection assistant is provided to make the selection of duplicate files easier. The options offered are quite extensive. It is possible to keep audio files with the highest bitrate, length or sample rate. Other filters include selection by date and time, file size, group, pattern in name or path and those that are not located in a master path.

Scan time will vary depending on the parameters of the scan, the number of folders and files and the speed of the drives. Duplicate Cleaner is a sophisticated computer software program to find duplicates on a computer system.

This can be handy in situations where files usually land in an upload directory with limited space or to automatically transfer files from a directory to another on the computer’s hard drive. P2P users might also like the idea of moving finished downloads from the download directory to another directory.

Move Out uses rules that specify names and extensions that should be moved automatically from monitored folders to others. The process of setting up rules does not take long with the changes taking effect immediately. The user configuring the rules has to add a source and destination folder as well as names and file extensions that should be moved and optionally those that should be ignored. Wildcard usage is possible with the easiest being *.* which will move all files that appear in the source folder to the destination folder. File replacement rules can be set as well in case a file with the same name exists in the destination folder.

The program will check for matching files every three seconds by default. This value can be changed in the options of the program to in case a faster or slower speed is required.

Whatever it is sorting them automatically is probably the wiser choice than performing that task manually. I Like To Move It is a small portable software program for the Windows operating system that can automatically move files and folders to another location. A ini file is used to define the rules. Thankfully it is usually only once necessary to edit the ini files to suit individual needs. Files and folders will be separated by default. All folders are moved with the files they are containing to the location and placed into a main _folders directory. The files on the other hand are moved based on rules defined in the ini of the program.

About 20 different file extensions are already defined in the ini files. It will for instance move multimedia files into appropriate folders. This includes audio files like mp3 or ogg into the audio folder or doc and pdf files into the document folder. Executable files are handled differently as the program recognizes files like ini or cmd files that belong to that executable file. These will also be moved.

It is possible to add additional extensions easily in the ini that can either be placed in one of the existing folders or into a new one. Files will be overwritten by default if they are found in the destination folder. This can also be changed in the ini. The process of moving does not take long and the application can be closed after the process has finished.

Another possibility is the Open With desktop client which adds itself to the context menu of Windows Explorer after installation. A right-click on an unknown file type – or any file type actually – will display the “How Do I Open This” entry which will open a new window that contains a short description of the file type and software program suggestions to open those file extensions on the computer system.

Only free software programs have been listed during tests. Open With will link to the download page of those suggested programs or inform the user that the program is already installed on the computer system.

The display of the suggested software programs to open the file extensions was broken on the test system. Another aspect that many users will not like is that the program adds itself to the first position in the Windows Explorer context menu. To move the entry in Windows Explorer read Windows Explorer Context Menu Editor or Windows Explorer Menu Editor.

Lastly the program tries to install another application (PC Mighty Max 2009) during setup which is not needed for Open With to function properly. A quick check on the developer’s homepage revealed that it is a commercial software. It is not recommended to install that software.

Pick Me is a friendly computer program that will make the decision for the user. The user basically points it to a directory on his hard drive and selects the extensions that the software program should consider. Pick Me will then pick a number of files that meet the criteria from the hard drive and present the choices to the user.

The default number of results is 10 which can be changed in the options as well. Pick Me displays the results in a list. A click on a result will highlight it in Windows Explorer which means it takes just a hit on the enter key to start the playback.

The software program could need a fee additional features like the ability to save the preferences or multiple profiles for different file types, e.g. music, videos and text. It would also be great if there would be an option to automatically pick and play the first file in the list.

The application has been created over at Donation Coder so chances are good that the changes will be implemented. The software is completely portable and requires the Visual Basic 6 Runtimes which should be installed on most computer systems.

Whilst disk space is no longer seen as a problem, considering 1GB only costs about $0.20! However, I find it an issue on my MacBook where I only have 120GB of space and it can’t easily be expanded.

Finding hogs could be quite a task. Naturally, trawling through every directory is impractical, so automated tools must be used to find large directories and files. Software exists on most major operating systems to graphically show which folders are large and how large they are.

In 2005, gHacks reported about WinDirStat. This is freeware that shows how big directories are. WinDirStat displays everything in the C:\ (etc) drive, colour coded for the first level directory (eg Program Files or Windows), and on tiers below that it is divided as blocks. This is a easy to use visualisation. WinDirStat runs on all Windows operating systems from 95 (w/IE5) to Vista!

An OS X alternative to WinDirStat is Disk Inventory X. It is essentially identical to WinDirStat. GrandPerspective is another essentially identical option.

Linux users can choose between KDirStat or Baobab.

Another option is JDiskReport is a Java-based piece of software which analyses disk usage using pie charts. Presumably this will work on Windows, OS X and Linux.

The upload limits are 250 Megabytes for video files and 50 Megabytes for mp3 and images. The user guide is still speaking of a 2 Gigabyte limit per user which contradicts the information on the homepage of the service most likely because the user guide has not been updated with the new information.

The options offered by Oosah surely look nice. Besides the storage capacities the service offered Flickr, Youtube, Facebook and Picasa integration, an iPhone client, playlists, galleries, slideshows, public and private sharing and a easy to use web interface.

A new announcement on the homepage and on the blog seem to suggest that the developers did not expect the popularity of the service: Uploads have been disabled temporarily and Flickr integration disabled.

That problem is homemade on the other hand. The Internet has seen multiple services that made a huge announcement and could not live up to their promises because of the massive media coverage and exponential user increase.

The insight from the situation should be to make sure that the important data is backed up properly before rushing to new services.

Questions that arise could be if the file is really needed on the system and if it is safe to delete it. Deleting a file without knowing what it does can have impacts on other applications that are installed on the computer. Executing the file could be the solution but also a security risk.

A better solution to get file information is to use a program that can display additional information without having to execute the file on the computer. Karen’s Version Browser is just one application that can do it.

The software has to be installed on the computer system. Once executed it provides an Windows Explorer like interface that the user can use to browse to the directory that contains the files that he wants to identify. Several filters can be used to display only files of a certain type like executables or dynamic link libraries.

The files that match the filters are displayed in a short box in the program’s interface. Three buttons below that interface can be used to gather the file information. View opens a new window entitled Version Information which displays all kind of information about the selected file.

Some of the more important file information that are displayed are the Product Name, Company Name and File Description. Some information are not displayed depending on the type of file that has been selected.

Those information can give a clue about the file and may aid the user in the decision making process. The other two buttons are used to print or export the file information. Karen’s Version Browser can be added to the right-click context menu so that it can be used from within Windows Explorer instead.

Experienced users would probably perform a search on the Internet if they cannot identify a file on their computer system. Most file information should be available online which means that some users might think that Karen’s Version Browser is unnecessary. It can still be used to check the exact version of a file which can provide important information.

The software client basically uses one source folder on the hard drive where all the files and folders are stored in locally. Uploading files is just a matter of moving files and folders into the Dropbox zone on the computer or by creating and editing files already in that special folder.

When the Dropbox client is running the files and folders will get automatically synced with the online client which keeps the most recent copies of the files and folders including file revisions. The web client of DropBox can be used to download or view files without having to run the software client. The client can also be used to upload new files to the service.

Dropbox currently has a 2 Gigabyte limit for every user which is definitely enough for many purposes. One of the interesting features of Dropbox is being able to share a folder with another person. It pretty much works the same as sharing a folder between different computers.

The GUI is a bit messy at first but the help file has some hints on how to use the different parameters properly. The user can define files and directories that are excluded from being compared, wildcards are supported.

The next two lines are paths of two directories. The first path is the so called input directory which contains the files that are compared with the files of a second directory and copied to the third if they are found to be unique.

The next settings can be ignored and the last required field is the output directory where the unique files of directory 1 are copied to.

Instead of selecting a second directory it is possible to select a file list from the hard disk instead but there is unfortunately no information about its format. The four check boxes on the other hand are easily explained.

• Dates: Will copy newer files with the same file size
• Lengths: Files with the same name but different lengths will be copied.
• Update: Only files existing in both directories but with a newer date in the first will be copied.
• Recursive: Subfolders are included in the comparison.

Third Dir is a nice application especially for its size. It’s fast and reliable but definitely needs a better help and some GUI improvements.

Several computers can be authorized to access an account at Dropbox making it an effective way to work with files between those registered computers. Files can be downloaded at anytime and it is even possible to look at Revisions of those files. The so called Drop Box works much like the Windows Explorer. Files and folders can be added, deleted, renamed which will be automatically synced with the online interface of Dropbox.

Files can be recovered or purged in the web interface if they have been deleted on a registered computer. This is excellent if a file has been deleted by accident.

A public folder is available that can make files available for the public which basically means that the user can copy an url that gives access to the file or files in that folder.

Shared folders on the other hand are useful for project and team work. Every member that gets added to that folder can perform all file and folder operations which, in combination with the revision system, provides an easy to use way of handling project files.

Dropbox is definitely easy to use. There is no irritating progress bar or window during file uploads, everything is handled in the background. The current beta accounts can use 2 Gigabytes of free storage, it would be nice to see a feature where users who share folders can add part of their own storage to that shared folder. A Linux client is currently tested internally and will be available to all Beta testers pretty soon.

Plans are that the 2 Gigabyte account will remain free for all users and that Dropbox will earn their money with accounts that demand additional storage space and premium features.

I would like to thank Dark Kosmos for sending me the invite. I have ten invites of my own right now and would like to give them away here. Just post a comment and I will draw the lucky ten after a while.

Update:

Jon from Dropbox contacted me and promised to supply more invites for his website. I therefor invited the first nine users who left a comment for now and will invite the others once I receive additional invites!

If you do get attachments regularly, like digital camera pictures, music, funny pdf or Powerpoint presentations or files like that you know the cause for the huge size of your mail folder. It slows down the application as well and it is a good idea to either delete or remove the attachments from the mails by saving them to a directory on the hard drive.

The Outlook Attachment Remover Add-in (via Shellcity) adds the Attachment Remover button to Microsoft Outlook which becomes active after selecting a folder or message.

It removes (detaches) the attachments from the selected mails in Outlook and replaces them with a link to their location on the hard drive. Some alternatives are to keep the attachments or to add a text reference instead of a link to the mail message when removing the attachment.

Two additional filters are available. The first specifies a minimum file size and the second file extensions that will be processed. If you want to detach all document types you use the format .doc;.xls;.pdf;.pps;.

Subfolders of a selected mail folder can be processed and the folder structure can be retained on the hard drive. I was not able to find information about the supported Outlook editions on the website.