Clean up your drives quickly with this amazing revolution in disk space management.

BytesBak is the network administrator’s tool that allows you to maintain your disk space usage.  It provides tools that give you precise disk space information and enables the rapid cleaning of disk drives.  BytesBak is critical to the proper management of your network’s disk space.

BytesBak gives you all the information required to make sensible decisions when cleaning up your hard disks.

BytesBak maintains a history of disk space usage using a reference system.  A reference is a list of paths chosen by you and given a name for easy recognition.  The history is maintained by logging the reference and storing directory and file information as a log file.

You can see the space taken for every directory and file on the system.  You can find all your unwanted files on the entire system quickly and easily using the file filter utility.  You can tag files and then delete them or notify other network users with the e-mail facility to check whether files can be deleted.

BytesBak also allows you to print the results of your searches or send them to a spread sheet via the clipboard.

Using BytesBak’s compare facility you can compare any two logs from the same reference and see which files and directories have changed in size on the system.  You can even see files and directories that have been deleted.  The changes are clearly marked using visual indicators.  Your problem areas will be located in seconds, instead of the hours or days previously spent on this task.

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Where do I begin?

The first time you run BytesBak, the create reference wizard will appear and run automatically to assist you.

The tools and commands you need are easy to find on tool bars and in the menus.

The first thing you should do in BytesBak is create a reference.  A reference is a list of paths chosen by you and given a name for easy recognition.  A reference can be as small as one directory, up to all the paths on every drive on a network.

If you are a first time user or just need a little help, a reference wizard helps you create, log and view your reference.  To access the wizard, you can use the “Wizard” button on the tool bar or choose “File|New reference” on the main menu.

If you do not wish to use the wizard then you can use the “Create a reference” button on the tool bar or the pop up menus in the left window of the reference manager.

Once you have created a reference, the next step is to log it.  A log is a file created by BytesBak to contain a record of all the information about each file and directory specified by the reference.

To log a reference you must select the reference name in the reference manager left window.  You can use the “Log reference” button on the tool bar, or using the right mouse button pop up menu, click on the “Log now” menu option.  To display the log you can double click on the log in the right window.  You can also select the log then use the right mouse button pop up menu option “Explore log”.

If you wish you can have BytesBak appear as a Windows Explorer shell extension.  Using this option from within Windows Explorer gives you a way of quickly analysing a directory and its sub directories with BytesBak without having to create a reference, then a log of that reference

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Using BytesBak

In order to make the best use of BytesBak, it is important to understand the underlying methodology BytesBak employs.

Before you can effectively monitor changes in disk space on a daily basis, you need to become familiar with what is currently stored on your disk(s) and how much space it occupies.  Part of this stage should also include the deletion or tagging of unwanted files.  Tagging files is a way of marking a file prior to deletion in order to give the owner time to backup if required.

We call this stage the “hunt for disk space”.  This process needs to be performed initially, then once every month or so.  Once you have recovered adequate free disk space the methodology requires that you log your reference and compare with previous logs on a regular basis.  Changes that have occurred are detailed so you can delete or archive unwanted files quickly and easily.

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The Hunt for Space

The primary tool when hunting for disk space is the log explorer.  The log explorer displays the file size and the disk space taken by each file.  You will notice that often these two figures are not the same.  This is because the operating system allocates space for files and directories on disk drives in small chunks called allocation units.

If the file is smaller than the disks allocation unit then there is some wasted disk space.  If a file is larger than one allocation unit then a second is issued to the file and so on.  This means that the actual size of the file and the space that it takes on disk can differ greatly.  Archiving small files can sometimes eliminate much of this wasted disk space.  An example of an archive utility is WinZip.

Although archiving files can save you an enormous amount of disk space the primary method for reclaiming space is deletion.  Files and directories that don’t need to be there should be deleted.

The best way to start is to find the biggest directories on your system.  To do this click on the “Space taken” column heading in the right window of the log explorer to get the biggest directories at the top of the window.  By double clicking on the top directory you will see all the immediate sub directories and any files.  The biggest directories and files will sort to the top of the window.  Keep drilling down by double clicking on sub directories until you find the reason for the directory being so large.

Once you have determined the reason for your disk space problem it is time to decide on how to fix it.  You will have several options.  If the file it is a backup (*.bak) or a temporary file (*.tmp) then it can most likely be deleted without causing any problems.  You can search for these easily by sorting on file type in the right window, or use the filter and return all the files of a particular type for the entire log.  Other files to look for in this category are files with an extension or file name that starts with the character “~”.

If the directory contains data files such as a text documents, spread sheets, CAD or html files or any other data files that have not been accessed for a reasonable period then you could tag the file with a view to removal or archival.  Tagging gives the user time to make a backup prior to deletion if required or insist the file must not be deleted.

If you find large numbers of small files such as bitmaps or text files that have not been accessed for a while then you should archive these or back them up and delete them.  Some files will not be able to be removed because they contain critical data such as accounting or job information.

If you find large numbers of small files such as bitmaps or text files that have not been accessed for a while then you should archive these or back them up and remove them.  Some files will not be able to be deleted because they contain critical data such as accounting or job information.

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Keeping Free Disk Space

Once you have cleaned up and have your required level of free disk space, you can log your reference and keep it for future compares.  When you next log your reference you can compare it to your known log and quickly identify any changes.

To use the compare facility, select any two logs you wish to compare then use the pop up menu option “Compare”, or the “Compare” button on the tool bar to compare the logs.

Any differences between the logs are identified.  The changes are clearly marked with special visual indicators to make your job easy.  You will find all of the new files and directories and those that have changed in size or been deleted.  By following the visual indicators you will find it easy to locate the files that are using your disk space.

The strategy you use to deal with the files you find will depend on the type of file you are dealing with at the time.  Some files can be deleted, others archived and some you will have to live with.  Whatever you do with those individual files it is made much quicker by knowing which files to deal with, almost instantly.

It is important that you log your references, then compare them on a regular basis.  The more data you are dealing with the more frequently you should log.  Most organisations will find that logging on a daily basis will provide them with ample data to manage their free disk space.

To automate you can run BytesBak from the command line.  You can have the system perform a log and compare it with another log.  A summary of disk space will be automatically e-mailed to you so that you can see the significant changes.