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2nd November 2003

SOFTWARE REVIEW
SPACEMONGER

Brian Grainger

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brian@grainger1.freeserve.co.uk


 

Every so often one sees mentioned a piece of software that, although it performs a task that you can do with your existing setup, has a unique feature that suggests it may be useful. SpaceMonger is such a piece of software.

There are many file/folder viewers available for Windows that enable the reasonably proficient to manipulate files and folders and determine how disk space is used. The standard one that comes with Windows is Windows Explorer and this is the one I use most of the time. I occasionally use File Manager for those times I want to see what the disk really holds, rather than view it with the Microsoft spin. Then, one day, I saw a reference to SpaceMonger, which displays a disk's contents in a graphical fashion. Normally I eschew purely graphics based programs, but this time I was interested in how a disk drive could be displayed in such a way and be useful. I decided to download SpaceMonger and have a look.

SpaceMonger can be found at the following URL:
http://www.werkema.com/software/spacemonger.html

SpaceMonger is freeware and comes as a .zip file that contains two files, the SpaceMonger executable and a readme text file. Installation is a breeze. Simply unzip the archive to a folder of choice. There is no installation procedure and consequently SpaceMonger does not mess up your Windows system. In use I found it created an area within the Users area of the registry to hold optional setting values. Consequently, SpaceMonger comes under my category of FAB, (free and acceptably behaved), software.

The prime purpose of SpaceMonger is to keep track of how the disk space on your computer is used. It does not have full file management capability, so it is not a replacement for Windows Explorer.

Usage of SpaceMonger is reasonably intuitive. After running the executable file a blank SpaceMonger window is displayed with a toolbar of buttons at the top. Click the Open button and select the drive whose contents are to be displayed. The disk is then scanned for files and on completion the contents are show as a series of rectangles together with information on the free space available. The latter takes up rather a lot of Window room so if you want to see the file/folder structure better click the Free Space button to toggle off the display of free space information.

SpaceMonger will show you the contents of your drive as little rectangles. The larger the rectangle, the more space something is taking up. Rectangles that have other rectangles in them are folders. Rectangles with no other rectangles in them are files. Colours are used to show how deeply the files and folders are nested.

Hovering over a folder title which bring up a note of how much space the folder and all its contents are taking up.

You can get more information on a given folder by clicking on its title and then clicking "Zoom In", (or by double-clicking on its title). The window will change to show a larger, more detailed view of the folder and its files. You can zoom in as many times as you want. "Zoom Out" will take you back out (up) by one folder. "Zoom Full" will take you all the way back to show the whole drive. If you double-click a file, rather than a folder, the file will be opened, i.e. run.

Spacemonger gives you the capability of deleting files or folders by highlighting the item to delete and clicking the Delete button. The item will then go to the recycle bin, irrespective of whether the shift key is depressed when you click the delete button.
(Note: In Windows holding the shift key button while deleting an object will delete the object without bothering with the recycle bin. This saves time for those who think they know what they are doing).

'Drag and drop' and 'cut, copy and paste' are not supported, so movement of files around the disk drive is not possible.

As with most good Windows programs right-clicking an object in the SpaceMonger window will bring up a context menu of actions. In this case SpaceMonger provides the same actions that are available on the toolbar buttons, which saves on mouse movement!

That explains the basics of SpaceMonger, but is it useful? Well, I have found two uses for it already.

I have a CD Writer and tend to use CD R/W disks to collect various things - one for programs, one for interesting documents, one for images and so on. I prefer these to CD R disks as they can be used just like an extra disk drive. However, they will get full eventually. At this point I need to move some stuff to another CD, usually a CD R. SpaceMonger is very useful for displaying the contents of the full CD R/W disk and showing me which areas take up the most space. Consequently, I can quickly see which items to move to free up most disk space on the CD R/W.

The second use I have considered for SpaceMonger is for that time when suddenly it is reported that your hard drive is running out of space! It does not happen to me, but it has happened to friends and work colleagues. Under such circumstances it is normal to fire up Windows Explorer and see what can be deleted. I can see that SpaceMonger could provide the information needed much more quickly. Look for the big rectangles to see what is hogging the drive.

To sum up, SpaceMonger is an original tool that, by doing things slightly differently, makes it useful in particular circumstances. Being FAB software, SpaceMonger is one which will stay in my software collection for those times when I need it.


 

 

 

 


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