Whatever the reason, a portable folder monitoring software like Watch 4 Folder might be exactly what they are looking for.

folder monitoring

The program can be configured to watch one folder including all of its subfolders and files. Setup is a four part process that begins with the selection of a folder in the build-in folder browser. The events that the user wants to monitor are selected in step 2.

Here it is possible to select file or folder create, delete or modifications, free space changes, association changes or media inserts and removals although we are not sure what the last two actually monitor.

Events are configured in the third step. Possibilities include writing a log file that contains every change since the beginning of the monitoring, executing a program or batch file or displaying a popup message whenever a change is noticed.

One interesting option would be to run a cleanup software or backup software if a change is recorded to either remove additional files or restore a previous state.

The Start monitoring button starts the actual folder monitoring, the program can be minimized to the system tray from that moment on.

The monitoring software uses roughly 17 Megabytes in the background, not that low but still acceptable for most usage scenarios.

Watch 4 Folder is a portable software for the Windows operating system. It is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows and can be downloaded from the developer’s website over at Lee Lu Soft.

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.