gHacks technology news » folders

Spotlight-V100 and Trashes Folders On USB Flash Drives

Martin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:34:47 +0000

A friend of mine contacted me recently with a problem that he could not figure out on his own. He discovered that two hidden folders had been created on his USB flash drive. One folder was named .spotlight-V100 while the other was named .trashes. This puzzled him as he was certain that they were not created by him or any program that he used to work with. A quick research on the Internet solved the problem.

The .spotlight-v100 and .trashes folders were created automatically by an Apple Macintosh computer system that the USB flash drive was plugged in before. These two folders are automatically created whenever a USB flash drive is connected to a computer system running an Apple Mac operating system. Spotlight is a indexing process on the Mac that will save the information that are gathered in the .spotlight-v100 directory.

The .trashes folder on the other hand is simply a trash folder for the specific drive which is also created by Apple Macintosh computer systems. Windows users can simply delete both hidden directories to free up disk space.

There is however no need to worry that these two folders have been created by malicious software.

Tags: folders, macintosh, spotlight-v100, spotlight-v100 folder, trashes, trashes folder, usb flash drive

Windows Software To Create Multiple Folders At Once

Martin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:17:58 +0000

There probably are not a lot of users of the Windows operating system who need to create thousands of folders in short time. If you are one of them you can automate the process with the program New Folder Wizard which is capable of creating up to 20000 folders in one run. While my imagination is not able to come up with a scenario for that many folders there might be others who exactly need a software program like this to save lots of time.

New Folder Wizard is a portable software program for the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0, runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system and can be downloaded directly from the developer’s homepage. The software itself comes with a set of interesting features to aid the user in the folder creation process.

The configuration of the software is handled in the main interface. The user needs to select a target folder which becomes the root folder for the folders that are created. It is furthermore possible to add folder prefixes and suffixes, starting and ending numbers and steps for those numbers.

Another option is to load a text file containing names into the program to create folders based on these names. The process can be previewed so that the user knows how the folders will be named. The generated folder names can be copied to the clipboard for external processing.

New Folder Wizard is an interesting lightweight application for the Windows operating system.

Tags: create folders, folders, new folder wizard, portable software, software, Windows, windows software

Consolidate Files With Suction

Martin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:31:44 +0000

One of the new features of the soon to be released Windows 7 operating system is the ability to consolidate folders into so called libraries. This can be used for example to create a library for all music or videos that are located in various folders on the computer’s hard drive. Suction on the other hand provides the means to consolidate files that are located in subfolders in one root folder. There are several applications for a tool like Suction.

It can for example be used by P2P users to move all the files that are located in subdirectories in the download folder to the main download folder to get better and faster access to the files. Other possibilities are to move photos that have been transferred from a digital camera into one main folder as these photos are usually stored in subfolders named after the date they have been taken.

Suction is a portable software program for the Windows operating system that supports drag and drop and context menu operations. It will automatically move all files that are located in subfolders into the main folder. The subfolders will be removed in the process so that the root folder will only contain all files that have been located in subfolders.

The user can either drag and drop a folder into the application’s interface or right-click a folder after activating the context menu option in the program’s options. Duplicate files will either be renamed automatically by the software program or deleted automatically.

Tags: consolidate files, copy files, file folders, folders, move files, portable software, suction, windows software

Monitor Folders In Windows

Martin — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:29:16 +0000

A user can have several purposes to monitor folders in the Windows operating system. It can for example improve the security of the operating system by ensuring that the system administrator is informed about changes to files and folders in monitored directories. It can also be used to process files and folders automatically if changes occur. One possible scenario for that would for example be a folder where new files are uploaded to regularly. A program that monitors that folder might be able to start commands or additional tools to process these files automatically.

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.

Tags: files, folders, monitor files, monitor folders, watch 4 folder, windows software

Access Folder History With Folder Cache

Martin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:28:57 +0000

How often has it happened to you that you closed a folder only to reopen it again several minutes later? There is not much that you can do but to click all the folder icons again until you reach the desired folder in the folder hierarchy. Third party tools or desktop indexing programs might help but the majority of users is not using them. If you want something simple, lightweight that works out of the box then Folder Cache might be exactly what you are looking for.

The portable software program has been designed by Donation Coder member Miles Ahead. It is a compiled AutoHotkey application which means some antivirus programs might identify it as a false positive. The program remembers the 24 most recent folders of the Windows operating system and provides easy access to them when needed.

It will sit quietly in the Windows system tray for most of the time and can be activated by pressing the keyboard shortcut [Shift Page UP]. This will open the main program window displaying the most recently opened folders.

The most recent folders are located at the top. A double-click on any folder will open it in a new Windows Explorer window. It takes a second or two to open the folder meaning the delay is noticeable but still way faster than having to open the folder manually in Windows Explorer again.

There are a few aspects that might be worth changing. The delay should be investigated and if possible reduced to speed up the process. It would be nice if the software developer would add preferences to the computer program. Thinking of settings to change the number of recorded folders. Another interesting feature would be the addition of permanent folders in the interface that the user could add.

Folder Cache is a lightweight tool for users who work (a lot) with Windows Explorer.

Tags: donation-coder, folder cache, folders, portable software, windows software

Move Files Automatically

Martin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:23:33 +0000

We reviewed a software program to sort files and folders automatically just a few hours ago. This time we are reviewing another file management tool to move files automatically without having to initiate the transfer manually. Move Out is a portable software for the Windows operating system that will monitor specific folders in the operating system and move files matching patterns from those folders into others on the 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.

Tags: files, folders, move files, move files automatically, move out, portable software, windows software

Sort Files Folders Automatically

Martin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:51:51 +0000

If you are a messy downloader – that is someone who likes to place all downloads into one folder which grows very large in size over time – you might need a tool to sort the files and folders in that download folder automatically. There are other scenarios where sorting files and folders might come in handy. Maybe someone gave you a DVD full of files or you finally decided to move the downloaded P2P files from the incoming folder.

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.

Tags: donation-coder, files, folders, i like to move it, move files, portable software, sort folders, sort-files, windows software

Associate Folders With Virtual Drives

Martin — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:24:55 +0000

Windows already comes with the subst command that can associated folders with virtual drives so that those folders appear with a drive letter whenever partitions and drives are shown in Windows. Most users feel uncomfortable using the command prompt and prefer a graphical user interface instead.

Visual Subst is one of the few software programs out there that can associate folders with drives. The portable application can be run from any location and saves the information in an ini file so that the changes can be reloaded after restarting Windows.

The interface is pretty self-explanatory. The user picks a free drive letter from the list of available ones and selects a folder that should be associated with it. The folder is then accessible through the drive letter as well which can be quite handy for certain tasks.

Visual Subst ist compatible to Windows 2000, Windows XP and newer operating system which would include Windows Vista.

Tags: folders, software, subst, subst folder, visual subst, windws

Output Files And Folders To A Text Document

Martin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:08:24 +0000

Disk Index provides a visual interface for the Dos dir command that can output files and folders of a system partition and drive. As we all know the Dos command dir /s > dir.txt creates an output of all files and folders originating from the directory the command was issued. The file dir.txt contains information about all drives and folders to a maximum of all files and folders of a drive if the command was started from the root directory.

Disk Index lists all available drive letters in its program window and additional information about the currently selected drive below that. This information changes when a new drive letter is selected.

The user has to specify a log file which the information will be written to. It will write additional information in the header of the text document including disk size, containing files and folders.

Disk Index works perfectly fine on Windows XP Service Pack 3. There is no information regarding compatibility with other systems.

Tags: dir, directory, disk index, folders, software, Windows

Disksum Displays Biggest And Largest Folders

Martin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:33:46 +0000

Sure there are prettier disk analyzers than Disksum. Those that display all kinds of fancy colored graphs to show you the folders that use the most space on your hard drive and those that contain the largest amount of files.

Disksum does not compete with them. It’s an ultra efficient tool that displays the biggest and largest folders on the command line. All you need to do is put it into the root folder that you want to analyze and run it.

It scans the folder and displays the values of every subfolder directly in the command line.

The output begins with the sizes of each folder and a second part that is displaying the very same folders sorted by file count and total size. Could come in handy in a few situations. The app is portable.

Tags: check-folder-size, disk analyzer, disksum, folders, software

Create New Folders Quickly

Martin — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:02:35 +0000

Creating multiple folders in Windows at once is not really enjoyable because Windows itself does not provide a shortcut key or way to create folders quickly. New folders can be created with a right-click in the folder or by clicking on the File menu in Windows.

The free software BX New Folder (download)adds a system wide shortcut to create folders in Windows Explorer quickly. The F12 key can be used to create a new folder in Windows Explorer quickly. A menu pops up after pressing the F12 key that displays the current folder and provides a form field where the user can enter the new folder name.

The new folder will be opened directly in Windows Explorer if the user is pressing the Shift key during creation.

I would not run the application all of the time but it does come in handy if multiple folders have to be created, especially if a complex folder structure has to be created.

Tags: folders, software, Windows, windows tips, windows-explorer

How to close multiple windows in the taskbar at once

Martin — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:02:48 +0000

New folders are always opened in a new window on my system because I think it’s a comfortable way to work with folders and windows. I never liked the default way of opening a new folder in the same window. This spawns a lot of windows when I navigate to a folder like the Firefox profile folder and I would like to pass a tip on how I close multiple windows in the taskbar at once with no effort at all.

No third party software or add-on is needed for this little tip that saved me lots of time over the years. All you need to do is to press the CTRL key and left-click the folders that you want to close. Once all folders have been selected right-click the last and select Close Group from the menu.

This closes all the selected folders at once. This works pretty well with other windows and can be used to quickly close multiple programs that reside in the taskbar as well and it is even possible to mix applications and folders.

Tags: close windows, folders, taskbar, Windows, windows tips

Copy all to one folder

Martin — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:42:02 +0000

I recently covered how to move all files from subdirectories into main directory using a Windows shell extension. If you prefer a clean shell you might be delighted to hear that there is another application out there that provides the same functionality. Copy all to one is that application.

It comes with a clean interface that requires minimal user input; basically only the source folder and the destination are required before hitting the Start button of the software. All subfolders of the selected source folder are processed automatically. A name for the destination folder can be selected as an option, it’s New Folder by default.

The program options provide several advanced features like copying only files that have a certain file extension, deleting the files in the source folder, renaming existing files and moving the files instead of copying them.

The authors homepage is hard to navigate which is why I link to the file directly and to the homepage. It’s a pretty solid application that comes in handy for users who clean up some folders regularly by moving files into other folders.

Tags: files, folders, software, Windows, windows-explorer

Undo Closed Folders

Martin — Mon, 19 May 2008 08:44:59 +0000

The function to undo closed tabs in Firefox comes in very handy and I make use of it regularly. That got me thinking that there has to be a similar function in Windows that allows me to undo closed folders as well. It probably happens as regularly as accidentally closing tabs in Firefox and normally means to waste ten or so seconds to open that specific folder again.

Windows does not have that function build in, that’s for sure but I was able to discover the software Folder View which, among other functions, comes with a folder history. The application basically adds another toolbar to Windows Explorer that provides fast access to selected folders on the computer’s hard drive.

This is pretty useful as well but I mainly use it because of its recent folders option that displays a list of the recently closed folders. A click on one of the folders would open the folder again making it possible to continue working with it.

Tags: folder view, folders, software, undo closed folders, Windows, windows-explorer

Quick Folder Access with Direct Folders

Martin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 14:49:37 +0000

Every Windows user browses for folders regularly, be it to save files in specific folders or to load files from folders. Windows itself offers no way of saving often used folders as favorites so that they can be accessed with just a click. I already did test several applications like Flashfolder but I did discover the perfect application for my needs only recently.

Direct Folders adds a double-click menu that gives the user access to folders,files and recent documents that he has added to the application before. The system is so simple that I would call it brilliant. A double-click opens the Direct Folders menu when you are in Windows Explorer, Windows desktop or a file browsing dialog (like Save or Load) and opens a folder or file with just another click.

Several items can be added to the menu. First of all direct access to folders and files can be added on the main level. Separators can be used to visualize folder categories or add a break between folders and files. Last but not least subfolders can be created that add another level to the menu meaning in return that you need another action to access the folders or files contained within.

Several other file related settings can be changed in Direct Folder. The default size of the file dialogs windows can be changed to an appropriate size as well as the default viewing mode (Thumbnails, Icons, Details, Tiles and List), the sort order (Name, Size, Type and Date) and if it should be ascending or descending.

The folder and file favorites as well as the recent documents can also be accessed by shortcuts. The default shortcuts are Windows Q for the Favorites and Windows W for the recent documents.

A pro version is available as well which adds several new functions like information about the size of a drive, the ability to set default folders for any application and an option to customize folder icons.

Tags: direct folders, folder favorites, folders, windows software, windows tips, windows-explorer

Sort files in Vista easily with The Magic Folder

Daniel Pataki — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 13:01:19 +0000

While surfing the net I tend to download a lot of stuff. Not because I enjoy cluttering my hard drive with thing’s I’ll never look at again, but for example to make a blog post I need a picture from here, a link from there, all this mounts up to a lot of stuff.

When I installed Vista for the first time I scanned through sidebar widgets and found the perfect one to help me keep track of what I downloaded, while also keeping my desktop free of unnecessary stuff. The gadget you need is called The Magic Folder.

The essence of it is that you can set a watched folder, for example your downloads folder for your Firefox, and the gadget will automatically sort the files into other folders based on extension. You can of course drag and drop stuff from your desktop as well. I use the second way, since I still like to see what I have downloaded, but I want to sort if really quickly. I can just drag and drop everything and they will go into the folders I want them to, here’s how:

Head over to The Magic Folder on Windows Live Gallery and download it. You may need to save it first, since I have trouble auto-installing gadgets. Just download it to your desktop and run it and you should be fine. Once you see it in the sidebar click the settings icon and first of all check the “Turn on the Watched folder” setting.

If you are annoyed by the way the icon looks with the bunny (I was), then click on the “Visual” and change the style and color to whatever you need. In the screenshot I have captured a blu, default folder.

Click on the “Folders” and set where you want to sort your files. You can specify a folder for each type you see listed. You can also create new ones using the plus sign. When you are finished setting up your sorting folders click on the extensions tab. Here you can choose an extension, and also choose the location where you want to sort it.

It takes a few minutes to set up, but it’s well worth it, happy sorting!

Tags: filesort, folders

Is it safe to delete $NtUninstall files ?

Martin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 07:34:42 +0000

You might have noticed a lot of hidden files in your Windows directory starting with the string $NtUninstall and maybe you asked yourself the question if it was save to delete those files. Those $NtUninstall are created whenever you install a new service pack or patch from Microsoft. Most folders end with KBxxxxxx which related to the corresponding Knowledge Base article about the update.

The only negative effect of deleting those folders in your Windows directory has is that you will not be able to uninstall those Microsoft updates anymore. While most users could without doubt delete those $NtUninstall folders some might want to have a backup plan.

Instead of just deleting the folders you could first back them up on CD or DVD. This would ensure that you could copy them from the backup to the right location again if you wanted to uninstall a patch or service pack.

A quick check revealed that all those folder used roughly 200 Megabytes on my hard drive in compressed state. I personally feel that this is a bit to much and decided to delete those folders. I really can’t think of a situation why I wanted to uninstall a Microsoft update that I installed a while ago.

I would probably wait a few days before I would delete a folder from a brand new update which could make problems on my system but the older ones ?

Tags: $NtUninstall, folders, microsoft, Windows

Use Favorites to access Folders faster

Martin — Sun, 20 May 2007 11:00:30 +0000

I’m using some folders over and over again in my daily work routine. My mp3 folder for instance, my profile folder and the folder that contains most of my applications stored on my computer. I have been using shortcuts to access them until now but today I found a free software that adds favorite folders to the right-click menu.

Folder Guide makes it possible to reach any folder that you have added with just two clicks. Adding folders is pretty easy as well. You click on Add in the main program interface and choose an alias which is the name that will be shown in the right-click menu and a path to the folder that should be opened when you select it.

It is furthermore possible to sort the folders in the right-click menu to create a structure that you are comfortable with. You can add folders from removable drives or network drives which is nice if you are connecting those to your computer.

Tags: folder favorites, folders, right-click menu, windows-explorer

Automatically move files from your desktop

Martin — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 15:09:53 +0000

I had a small conversation with mouser today, one of the guys who runs the great donations coders website. He mentioned that they were running a blog and forum as well and I was kinda stunned by this. I visited the site many times but never realized that there was a well frequented blog and forum as well. One of the blog posts was mentioning a new application called Desktop Teleporter which immediately caught my attention.

A user of the donation coder forum suggested a new application that would automatically move files that were in the process of being placed on the desktop to a selected folder. You may choose a folder on your own and select to exclude file extensions and file types from this process. Everything else will be moved if the application is running in the background.

Last but not least you may choose to add notes to files that are moved or disable that option completely. I was thinking that the application could be enhanced by adding filters to it that would move files to different folders if you choose to.

The program stays in the system tray, can be paused if you like and resumed at a later time. It also has a right-click entry that takes you directly to the folder that you have chosen.

Tags: desktop, donation-coder, files, filter, folders, freeware, messy, organize, Windows

Folders Report

Martin — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 19:15:01 +0000

Your hard drive is filled to the brim but you don’t know why ? You want to free up some disk space on a drive because you are going to need it for some other files that you want to save there ? Windows is not offering many help when it comes to determining which folders are holding the largest files on your hard drives.

Folders Report is a freeware that scans a drive, partition or folder for information and displays them in a neat list. It lists all folder names, size of files and size on disk, the amount of files and the location. It scans drives very fast, my f: drive for instance is a 160 GB hard drive and it took only some seconds to scan the entire drive and display its contents.

Folders Report offers some advanced information as well, e.g. information about hidden, read only, system and compressed files in a certain folder, the number of subfolders, the date the folder was created and last modified and the directory level which is simply the amount of folders between root and the current folder.

The program can be run from any location on your hard drive, it does not install itself and does not change settings on your system. You can sort the listing by clicking on one of the tabs like Size on Disk or Files.

Tags: folders, folders report, software, Windows

gHacks technology news » folders

Spotlight-V100 and Trashes Folders On USB Flash Drives

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