ShowSize version 5.0.2 (in pre-release)
Note: This version is only available to paid users with a valid subscription from the support area at support.showsize.com.
Known problems in 5.0.2:
- On Windows Vista, the partition containing Vista itself disallows scanning of certain folders even when ShowSize is running as administrator. These folders may be related to System Restore images. Hence, the actual occupied disk space is much more than what ShowSize shows for the Vista partition.
New features in ShowSize 5
- New scan engine: ShowSize now uses a newly designed scan engine so that we can start adding new reports to it with less effort than with the earlier code. The new design also improves the speed of many operations such as sorting on very large reports.
- Improved filtering: The filtering options have been redesigned so that instead of eliminating System and Hidden items in the scan, they can be eliminated by using the filters. Also, an item is now considered system or hidden even if it is not itself system or hidden but is contained in a top level system and hidden folder. You can verify and understand how the filters work by using a new option that shows the filtered items in a different color instead of removing them.
- New Find Names feature: Searching for a file name in any report is now much easier. See Finding items.
- Dynamic filtering of System and Hidden items: The option “Ignore System and Hidden” has been removed from Scan options and instead put in the filters as described above. However, there is a new advanced option that disables browsing to folders which are both System and Hidden. This is for your own protection.
- Vista support: ShowSize has been modified to support Vista features.
- Unused Files report discontinued: A major Windows Vista related change is that we have discontinued Unused Files report and Used Date column for the reasons mentioned in the help topic “Report discontinued.” The report appears on earlier Windows systems but with a severe warning because the report can still be useless for volumes shared with Windows Vista computers.
- New reports (not available in ShowSize PE):
- Only Folders: This is similar to Only Files and presents all the folders in one flat list.
- Owners: This report is available only in 5-user licenses or better.
- Saving and sharing of reports with other users (available only in 5-user licenses or better): See Sharing reports with other users.
- Better help: ShowSize help is now much improved. You can also search it on multiple words. We have started a blog too where you can get some tips and answers to common questions.
- Start Command Prompt/Start Administrative Command Prompt: You will see this new menu item on the right-click menu of the reports. This starts a DOS prompt with the selected folder as the current directory. See Starting command prompt.
- Smarter modified time value: The option to consider modified time as later of modified or create time can now be dynamically controlled on the advanced page of Options. Earlier, it only operated on a new scan.
- Symbolic link skipping (not available in ShowSize PE): If any symbolic links are found during scanning, they are now ignored and skipped. But you can choose to include them by switching off a new option on the Scan page of Options. You can also set up a color for Symbolic Link items in the reports on the General page of Options.
- Better error processing and alerts: Instead of using different balloon hints, ShowSize now uses a composite alerting mechanism. If any alerts are raised during a scan or report fill up, ShowSize notifies this to you by a balloon popup. You can disable this in the Scan page of options. You can always see any alert messages by clicking on an Alerts button that comes up below the reports. Also, now if the cluster size can not be obtained, the “wasted space” and “size on disk” columns show no data instead of showing estimates which can be wrong.
- Auto refresh (not available in ShowSize PE): A new operation Auto Refresh allows you to leave a ShowSize window open to show the latest reports on a disk location.
- New command line options (not available in ShowSize PE): See “Specifying ShowSize options on the command line” in the help file for details.
- /vafd - Show all folders (Folders Only) report
- /vor - Show Owners report
- /svcsva - continues adding to the same CSV file instead of overwriting it.
- /actCsvNoMods - such new options allow some excludes from the active folders report
- /pons - print no summary
- /ll:n - limits the active folders report to n levels.
- /svssr - Save ShowSize report (available only in multi-user licenses)
- Disabling compressed size calls and speeding up: You can speed up rescanning on NTFS compressed drives by switching on the option Do not determine compressed sizes on the Scan page of options. However, this speed up comes at a cost–the Size on Disk is no longer the actual compressed size. Use this option only if you are not interested in the accurate “Size on Disk” and “Wasted Space” values.
- Better font handling: ShowSize now uses better default fonts and your font changes in General Options are processed better. Disabling alternate graying of rows: There is a new option, “Do not make alternate rows gray in the reports” on the General page of Options.
- Windows 98 is no longer supported: ShowSize 5 can not be run on Windows 98 or earlier systems. We had to make this hard decision in order to allow future development of new features for the newer Windows systems like XP and Vista.
