FAQ > Main Program

Q:	SpaceObServer doesn't start to scan a selected directory. What could be the problem?

A:	See FAQ - Scans

Q:	Why is the allocated space that Windows shows in the properties dialog of the drive larger than the allocated space that SpaceObServer reports.

The Windows Explorer shows the space that is physically allocated on the drive while SpaceObServer shows the space that is occupied by all files under a certain path. Please make sure that you have the view option "Allocated Space" activated when you are interested in the physically allocated space. Beyond the space that is needed for storing the files itself, additional space is used for storing management data like the File Allocation Table of the file system or the boot sector. This is usually 0.5 - 2% of the occupied space. It is not possible to free this space with SpaceObServer or any other tool. Another possibility is that you are using a Software RAID - like Windows offers it - which spreads the data with redundancy over several disks. These disks will appear as one logical volume and the failure of a single disk will not cause any data loss. But for storing the redundant information additional space is needed.
On Thinkpad laptops the Rescue&Recovery feature may use a lot of disk space in the folder "RRBackup" which is not accessible to other applications.
If a drive letter points to a sub folder of a network drive, the allocated space (correctly) reported by SpaceObServer may also be much smaller than the physically allocated space on this drive reported by the Windows Explorer because it is possible the whole drive is not accessible through the network. A further possibility is that not all parts of the drive could be scanned due to access restrictions. Turning on the Option "Track NTFS Alternate Data Streams and NTFS Hard Links" in the "Configure Scans" dialog may result to more accurate results but slightly slows down scans.

Q:	Building up the Details view takes quite long. Is there a way to reduce this time span ?

Select in the Details view ("Tools > Options > Columns/Export") only the columns you need and hide the other ones. Please find a list of very costly columns at "Options > Columns/Export". In case the selected directory is on a network drive, the detection of the file icons could take some time. To prevent this please activate the option "Determine Icons based on File Extension only" ("Tools > Options > View").

Q:	For some folders SpaceObServer shows last accessed / changed dates that are far in the future. Why?

The last access/change date for a folder shown by SpaceObServer is the latest access/change date of a file inside this folder and its subfolders. Most likely, somewhere in these folders are files with a last access/change date far in the future, and so the last change date of the whole folder has the same date. You can try to search for these files using the Windows file search. These files are often a result of Y2K test or of a client PC with a wrong system date.

Q:	Why do all files on my disk have the same last access date which is not far in the past?

A:	Windows updates the last access date of a file each time when an application accesses or reads the file. Many backup and antivirus tools access every file on your hard disk regularly without restoring the prior last access date.

Q:	The information that SpaceObServer reports seems to be corrupted. Is there anything I can do?

A:	Open the Configure Scans dialog ("Scan > Configure Scans") and choose "Check Data Consistency" on the tab "Expert Settings" for the relevant scan. Please execute an update scan, if the shown information is not corrected. If this does not resolve the problem, please contact us.

Q:	What is your recommendation for having antivirus software running on servers where SpaceObServer is scanning?

Since SpaceObServer only reads information from the files, a virus scanner should not be influenced by SpaceObServer scans. If you use SpaceObServer with a local SQL server, we recommend excluding the SQL server files from your virus scans, because these files will be frequently updated within SpaceObServer scans.

Q:	Can I use SpaceObServer in a clustered environment?

You can use SpaceObServer in a clustered server environment by installing it on one of the nodes. That means that a node fail over is not handled, but scheduled scans will be started automatically after the node is running again. You can also install SpaceObServer on each node. If you do so, you have to change the observing server for the scanned roots to each of the nodes, or to none. You can configure the observing server in the edit field "Observing Server" in the "Expert Settings" tab of the "Configure Scans" dialog ("Scan > Configure Scans"). Leave the observing service blank to allow any SpaceObServer service to execute scheduled scans. You can enter multiple servers, separated by semicolon (";"). By default, local drives are stored in the database in their UNC convention (e.g.: "C:\" -> "\\<servername>\C$\"). To ensure that each node is able to scan these drives you have to scan "\\LOCALHOST\C$\" instead. For each node you install SpaceObServer on you need one licence (See FAQ - General / Registration).

Q:	On a Novell Netware volume, SpaceObServer reports compressed files as uncompressed and the user names are missing in the Owner columns. Why?

Unfortunately the Netware client for Windows does not support information about compression and file owners through standard Windows API functions. So developers have to integrate special support for Netware in their applications. We may address this issue in a later version of SpaceObServer, but so far, we do not actively support Netware.

Q:	I would just like to know how intrusive this software is. I plan on using it on production file servers and would like to know if this will bog down the performance on my servers.

A:	The SpaceObServer Agent puts only a very little load on the server. Since the data is handled entirely by the database server, most of the load occurs on the database server, so running the database server on a different machine ensures that SpaceObServer has little or no impact on your machine.

Q:	How do you detect duplicates shown in the "Duplicate Files" list?

By default the "Duplicate Files" list shows all files with same name, size and last change date. You can optionally use MD5 checksums to detect files with equal content. In this case you have to activate the option "Calculate MD5 checksums for files" (See Configure Scans), which results in slightly higher allocated database space and some increased performance usage of the SpaceObServer Agent. You can customize the combination of these criteria used for identifying duplicates (See Duplicate Files). Use the function "Compare Files Byte by Byte" from the context menu of this list to check the content of the selected files byte by byte.