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Beside of a simple deletion of redundant duplicate files SpaceObServer offers the possibility to deduplicate chosen files. This will recover the disk space allocated by your duplicate files but leave links to the files content in your file system.
Note: Before deleting or deduplicating any duplicate files you should ensure that the listed files are really redundant and not used, e.g. as part of a backup.
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 Service".You can customize the combination of these criteria used for identifying duplicates in the options. 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.
The scan service "SpaceObServer Service" causes very little load on the server. Most of the work is done by the database server. So you should move the database to another server to avoid overloading your production server.
We use the WindowsAPI functions to determine the user names. Unfortunately, the Netware client for Windows does not provide information about the owners through the normal Windows API functions. That's why Novel and Linux (some Samba versions) have this problem. However, all other functions are also available on Netware drives without restrictions.
Open the Configure Scans dialog ("Scan > Configure Scans") and choose "Check Data Consistency" on the tab "Expert Settings" for the relevant scan. This option will check and correct the database consistency of the selected scans. The operation could take some time. In the meantime there will be "Check data consistency" shown in the status field. You must not terminate SpaceObServer while this operation is performing. Please execute an update scan after the operation is done. In case the update scan did not resolve the problem, please contact us.
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 Hardlinks" in the "Configure Scans" dialog may result to more accurate results but slightly slows down scans.
Please execute the following steps:
1. Open the Windows system dialog "Services" ("Control Panel > (Performance and Maintenance) > Administrative Tools > Services").
2. In the list of the services (local) look for "SpaceobServer Agent" and stop this service.
3. Select "Properties" in the context menu of "SpaceobServer Agent".
4. Switch to the tab "Log On" and change from the "Local System account" to "This account".
5. Insert the necessary login information (username, password) for a user account with sufficient network access rights.
6. Start the service "SpaceobServer Agent" again.
Note: If you use a MS SQL Server and the integrated Windows security, the user you used for the service login have to have read and write access to the database!
Starting the setup with the command line parameters /SILENT /SUPPRESSMSGBOXES /PASSWORD=<installationkey> will perform a silent and automatic installation with the default settings. Please replace <installationkey> with the license key that you received after your registration. Using /VERYSILENT instead of /SILENT will prevent any visual feedback.
Use the options /SERVICEUSER <domain>\<username> and /SERVICEPWD <password> within the initial installation of SpaceObServer to specify the login information of the SpaceObServer scan service. Otherwise the local system account is used here, which can lead to problems when scanning network shares (See: "SpaceObServer doesn't start to scan a selected directory...").
The option /DIR=<directory> can be used to override the default install path.
After this you may configure your database connection using the OLE Automation Interface of SpaceObServer. A template script for an Unattended Installation of SpaceObServer can be found in the installation directory, in the sub directory "Demos" (See "UnattendedInstallation.vbs").
Updates are free within your maintenance period (12 to 60 months after purchase). You are allowed to use the software as long as you want to. If your maintenance period expires, you will get no more free updates, but you will be able to purchase a maintenance renewal for a reduced price in our customer's area.
In the "Help" menu of SpaceObServer you can use "Check for update" to check online if there are updates available. Within your maintenance you can download the latest version directly from the shown dialog. Alternatively you can download the new installer from our customer's area.
To update to the latest version just run the new installation file. Your scan data and all your user settings will persist.
