Monitor Directories With Directory Changes Watcher

Directory Changes Watcher is a small, lightweight (2 Megabytes while running minimized in the Windows System Tray) and portable software program for the Windows operating system that monitors directories and can move new or changed files to another directory.

The tool that is using only 111 Kilobytes unpacked on the local hard drive supports local and network directories. The first thing you need to do to configure the application is to select a folder on your local computer or the network that you want monitored by it. You also need to specify a folder that you want the files to be copied to.

A click on Capture will record the current states of both directories. All new and changed files can then be copied by clicking on the Create Mirror or Create Mirror and Recapture buttons in the interface.It needs to be noted that all files in the destination directory will be removed prior to copying the new and changed files.

This obviously limits the use of the program quite a bit. It could be used to copy the new and changed files of a web project into another directory to upload them to a server later on.

Exclusions can be configured in the project settings to ignore select file extensions or (part of) file names so that they are not copied even if they are changed or added to the monitored folder on the system. The program works well with online cloud syncing providers such as Dropbox. Say you have a project on your local PC that you want to back up regularly to the cloud. Just select the target folder that is synced online and you got a working online backup solution set up on your system.

Options to change that default behavior to not delete the files in the destination directory or to perform the operation automatically are not available at this time but would definitely increase the usefulness of the application. Directory Changes Watcher requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 or higher.

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