Last Used Files Report
I am looking for a Utility to report when the files were last used on a Windows 2003 server. This is to allow me to determine what can be archived and the disk space required for that. Does this feature exist in ShowSize?
Please download ShowSize PE from showsize.com and run a scan on one of your drives. Then see the “Unused Files” report.
The only problem is that some Windows versions can turn off the update of last access date of files. Windows Vista does that. On earlier Windows systems like yours, this update is usually switched on by default but someone can switch it off by tweaking the registry.
You can verify whether your Windows system does that by using ShowSize on a folder that you have not used recently. Observe what data the report “Unused Files” shows for say, 30 days period. Select one of these files that appears to have not been used in that time. Then right-click and see its proprties by Windows Explorer. This should update the access date of the file to today’s date. You can see that on the Properties immediately. A refresh from ShowSize will also remove that file from the Unused Files report. If it doesn’t work that way then the feature to record the access date is switched off on your Windows system.
Once you verify that Windows is recording the access date correctly, you can run ShowSize on other locations. But beware of locations shared with Vista computers. Those by default turn off this feature.
