The two defragmentation tools, I reviewed previously (MyDefrag, Disk Defrag), have good features for manually controlling the defragmentation process. By contrast, IObit Smart Defrag certainly lives up to its name because automatic defragmentation is its strength.

Most defragmentation tools support scheduling, and so does Smart Defrag. However, this feature is disabled by default. This makes sense because Smart Defrag has something better to offer: Automatic Defrag.

The problem with scheduled defragmentation is that it can’t always guarantee that the computer isn’t busy at the scheduled time, and a desktop or laptop could be powered off at the scheduled time. Automatic Defrag always runs in the background and only starts defragmenting if the PC is idle. You can configure the PC’s idle time, after which Smart Defrag becomes active, and you can tell the tool to pause whenever the resource usage exceeds a configurable percentage.

Smart Defrag’s Boot Time defrag is another function that most free defragmentation tools lack. Some system files can’t be defragmented during runtime because this would make the system unstable. You can configure Smart Defrag to defragment the pagefile, the hibernation file, the Master File Table (MFT), and other problematic system files when the computer boots up.

Yet another “smart feature” is quite useful for laptop users. Defragmentation can be automatically stopped when on battery. As disk activity is one of the biggest power consumers in a laptop, this feature will certainly improve the battery life noticeably.

You can’t manually defragment specific files and folders as with Auslogics Disk Defrag. However, you can exclude files and folders from automatic or scheduled defragmentation. This can be useful if you don’t want the tool to mess with an important database file.

Smart Defrag can also move frequently used files and directories into the fastest area of the disk. Unfortunately, it is unclear how the tool determines what files are frequently used. I guess, this feature only works for system files.

All in all, Smart Defrag is my favorite defragmentation tool from the three tools I have tested. It has the nicest user interface, and the background defragmentation convinced me. For scripting guys, however, MyDefrag is the best choice; if you often have to defragment specific files, Auslogics Disk Defrag is your best bet.

I tested Smart Defrag v2.0.1 on Windows 7.

IObit Smart Defrag

• Troubleshoot slow logon – Part 2: The 3-headed monster (0)
• Troubleshoot slow logon – Part 1: Profile size (0)
• How to disable the Shutdown Event Tracker in Windows Server 2008 R2 (0)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)

A few days ago, I reviewed MyDefrag, a script-based disk defragmentation tool. A downside of the tool is that its GUI is somewhat limited (although a reader commented that there is a better third-party GUI available). The free disk defragmenter Auslogics Disk Defrag definitely has a nicer GUI. It has the common features that most disk defragmenters support, such as fragmentation analysis and disk defragmentation scheduling. In addition, it comes with some special features that I will discuss in this post.

Disk defragmentation can speed up a computer significantly. The only problem is that during the defragmentation process, the computer can slow down considerably. Third-party disk defrag tools use different algorithms to minimize the impact on system operations by limiting defragmentation activities according to certain rules. But sometimes it is better to let a human decide how disk defragmentation should be restricted.

For this, Disk Defrag allows you to select what folders or files have to be defragmented. For instance, this can be useful if you only want to defrag a Hyper-V virtual disk file because you just defragmented the corresponding disks in the guest system. To defrag a certain file or folder, you only have to right-click the object in Windows Explorer and then choose Defragment with Disk Defrag. Note that Windows Explorer integration has to be enabled in the program settings first.

You can also select fragmented clusters; Disk Defrag will tell you what files are in this block. This helps you see whether defragmentation can really improve disk speed. If only rarely-used files are affected, you don’t need to defrag the disk.

Another feature that gives you more control over what will be defragmented is the option to skip fragments larger than a configurable size. Moving large fragments can slow down defragmentation noticeably but will only improve the disk performance slightly. For example, if a large file consists of the two fragments, you won’t notice the difference between the fragmented and defragmented configuration because reading the large file takes much longer than moving the disk head from one fragment to another.

If you use the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), you will like Disk Defrag’s VSS compatible mode. This feature reduces the growth of the VSS storage area caused by file movements and ensures that no shadow copies are overwritten.

Also useful is that Disk Defrag can delete Windows and user temporary files before defragmenting. It doesn’t make much sense to waste resources on defragmenting temporary files because, by nature, these files are only valid for a limited time. Unfortunately, it is unclear which temporary files Disk Defrag deletes.

Disk Defrag allows you to move system files to the beginning of the hard disk, which makes sense in most cases because the outer side of the disk contains more sectors per cylinder and, therefore, has a higher transfer speed. Thus, a system where the operating system resides at the beginning of the disk, boots up faster and has a higher responsiveness.

I tested Auslogics Disk Defrag 3.2.0.0 on Windows 7.

Auslogics Disk Defrag

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)
• FREE: DiskCountersView – Display hard disk drive system counters (0)

In the past, defragmented disks were the major reason why computers became slow over time. Since Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 support scheduled defragmentation, this problem is no longer that serious. However, the fact that Microsoft offers a defragmentation API shows that room still exists for third-party tools.

The website of the free defragmentation tool MyDefrag also addresses this topic. These are the reasons the tool’s developers give for using MyDefrag instead of the Windows Disk Defragmenter:

• Much faster.
• Totally automatic, extremely easy to use.
• Optimized for daily use.
• Disk optimization, several strategies.
• Directories are placed together.
• Reclaims NTFS reserved areas after disk-full.
• Maintains free spaces for temporary files.
• Can defragment very full harddisks.
• Can defragment very large files.
• Can defragment individual directories and files.
• Can be run automatically with the Windows Scheduler.
• Can be used from the commandline.
• Can be used as a screen saver.
• Can be run from cdrom or memory stick.
• Script language, can be customized.

It is difficult to verify if MyDefrag is really faster than the Windows Diskfragementer because you need two equally fragmented disks. What I find most interesting about the tool is that it allows you to script defragmentation tasks. MyDefrag comes already with special scripts daily, weekly, and monthly defragmentation tasks. The daily defragmentation task is the fastest and has the least impact on the machine. The other tasks are slower but more thorough.

Other things you can do in scripts is to only defragment certain file types, sort files according to various criteria (size, last access, last change, etc.) and advanced tasks like moving files from the NTFS reserved area to normal disk space. Check out the complete list of MyDefrag script commands for more information.

The defragmentation tool also distinguishes between data and system disks and can defrag flash memory disks. MyDefrag’s graphical user interface doesn’t belong to the best I have seen, but, I guess, this won’t bother the scripting guys. I tested MyDefrag v4.3.1 on Windows 7.

What is your favorite defragmentation tool?

MyDefrag

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)
• FREE: DiskCountersView – Display hard disk drive system counters (0)

What is the first thing you do if a user tells you that he reached the quota on the file server?

A.  Assign more space.

B.  Tell the user to delete all his games and movies.

C.  Find duplicate files in his home folder.

If your answer is A or B, you can now head to your well-deserved Easter weekend and search for eggs instead of files. If your answer is C, you need to stay a little longer.

I have seen user folders with several copies of the whole user profile. When questioned, the user answered that he heard that backups are important. So before you buy a new hard disk for your file server, you might want to check how many duplicate files are wasting your disk space.

A duplicate file finder is also useful if you need some arguments for introducing a collaboration software tool such as SharePoint in your network. If it turns out that the company newsletter has been stored a few thousand times on your file server, it is time to explain to management that internal circular e-mails are a somewhat outdated form of communication.

I didn’t test if Fast Duplicate File Finder is really fast, but it is quite good at finding duplicate files. Actually, it is better than good because it can also find similar files. The lower the configured similarity level is, the longer the scanning process will take.

Fast Duplicate File Finder uses different colors to highlight the similarity level. The preview pane allows you to look at at contents of duplicate files. Unfortunately, Microsoft Office formats are not supported.

Fast Duplicate File Finder enables you to auto-select duplicate files. You can either choose to check the older or the newer file. In the free version, auto-selecting isn’t supported for similar files. Check out the comparison table for differences between the pro and the free versions.

You can delete duplicate files, permanently remove, or move them to a configurable folder. It is nice that Fast Duplicate File Finder preserves the folder structure. So if a rebellious user complains that you deleted some of his favorite songs, you can easily find them again.

I tested Fast Duplicate File Finder 3.0.0.1 on Windows 7.

Fast Duplicate File Finder

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)
• FREE: DiskCountersView – Display hard disk drive system counters (0)

StarWind Software is raffling a license of their iSCSI SAN product. The winner will receive a license for StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition, worth $995 USD. More information about this contest can be found at the end of this article.

We had a review of StarWind 5.0 last year on 4ysops. Even though version 5.6 was just released, James Bannan’s article is still worth reading because it gives a good overview of this iSCSI SAN storage software for Windows.

StarWind 5.6 comes with quite a few new and interesting features:

• Event Log – Improve your storage management and tracking of system state with the new event viewer
• Event notifications Be aware of every single event by e-mail, records to Windows Event Log, records to text files
• Experimental version of inline block level Deduplication plugin
• Management Console multilevel improvements

If you want to take part in this raffle, please send an email to:

with the subject line:

StarWind

The deadline of this contest is April 8, 2011.

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• FREE: DiskCountersView – Display hard disk drive system counters (0)

It’s hard to believe that in the 21st century we are still using storage devices that rely on mechanical components. Even though tech enthusiasts have predicted for some years already that flash drives will replace hard drives at any time, I think we still have to live with these old-fashioned spinning disks for a while.

Aside from the fact that hard drives have slow access rates, their main disadvantage is that their mechanical components wear out over time. Although the life span of hard drives has increased considerably in recent years, it is still recommended to keep an eye on older computers in your network.

The life expectancy of a hard disk depends on several factors, such as operation hours, the amount of transferred data, the disk’s average fragmentation rate, and even the temperature in the computer casing. Certainly there are differences regarding the hard drive manufacturing quality of the various vendors and models. Hence, it is quite difficult to predict how long a particular hard drive will work flawlessly.

When you should replace hard drives also depends on the importance of the corresponding system and how disk failures are compensated with redundancy technologies such as RAID, clusters, etc. Another factor is your IT department’s budget. If you can afford it, I recommend replacing disk drives in desktops after 5 years and in important servers after 3 years.

NirSoft’s DiskCountersView can help you get an overview of the usage data of the disk drives in your network. DiskCountersView has a GUI that displays important disk drive system counters, such as read time, write time, read count, write count, read bytes, and write bytes. This information is useful if you want to predict the life span of a hard drive. The portable tool also displays other data about the hard disks such as partition start, partition length, tracks per cylinder, sectors per track, etc.

The command line version is perhaps more interesting than the GUI. Using the command line version, you can export the disk data to a file which allows you to write a script that collects the usage data of the hard disks in your whole network.

DiskCountersView

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

BleachBit is a free tool that allows you to clean disk space, on Windows (and Linux). For many third-party applications you can free disk space and to delete compromising files such as Internet history data.

Thus far, CCleaner has been my favorite cleaning tool. I haven’t yet had much experience with BleachBit, but the free tool has a good chance of getting a permanent place in my toolbox. Like CCleaner, BleachBit allows you to free disk space by deleting unneeded files from various applications. However, there are a few differences between the two free cleaning utilities.

BleachBit is Open Source

I don’t really intend to debug the source code; however, Open Source tools have a higher chance of remaining free. It appears that CCleaner is no longer free because there is only a “Buy and Download” link at the top of the page. However, if you scroll down you’ll find  links to third-party sites where you can still download CCleaner for free. It is as if the publisher wants to hide that the tool is free. Not that I think that CCleaner isn’t worth a donation; however, it is poor practice to trick people into “donating” this way. By contrast, BleachBlit is listed at SourceForge.net where you won’t be confronted with such little tricks.

BleachBit supports more applications

BleachBit supports about 70 applications while CCleaner can only free disk space for 5 applications (see comments below). Developers can contribute to the project by submitting new “cleaners”, that is add code for new applications which can be cleaned with the tool. This makes it likely that there will be even more supported applications in the future.

BleachBit is portable

Cleaning up the mess that users have left on a workstation is a common task for administrators. A portable computer cleaner comes also in handy whenever you want to delete your own temporary files on a server or user PC after you have finished your administration task. Update: CCleaner is also available as portable version (see comment below).

BleachBit has a command line interface

Perhaps it is part of your security policy to regularly delete Internet history and free disk space on user computers. If so, you will like BleachBit’s command line interface because you can use the tool in a script to automate the cleaning process on all your computers.

BleachBit allows you to shred files and wipe free disk space

At first I thought that these are just nice additional features. However, on second thought, these functions make a lot of sense for a computer cleaning tool. The point is that no computer cleaner supports all applications. Thus, in some cases you might have to delete files and folders manually. To ensure that those files can’t be recovered, you can use BleachBit’s shred feature. If you deleted files with Windows Explorer or another application, you can use the wipe-free-disk-space function to also securely delete his data. (Note: CCleaner support file shredding but not the wiping of free disk space.)

BleachBit supports 41 languages

Just in case you happen to speak fluent Asturian, you can change the language of BleachBit’s user interface. The sheer number of supported languages demonstrates how many different people are involved with the project.

I have only one complaint about the tool: its name. When I wrote this review, I couldn’t stop writing “Beachblit.” This might be due to my affinity to beaches, but somehow I like this name better. I have tested BleachBit 0.8.4.0.

BleachBit

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

Xinorbis is a free disk analyzer that is easy to use and provides a lot of valuable information about hard disk usage. There is an installable and a portable version.

Contrary to other disk analyzers, Xinorbis allows you to specify precisely what folders and files you want to include in the report. This is useful because sometimes you only need disk information for a small portion of a large disk. You can choose specific folders, exclude folders and files, and combine folders from different drives in one scan operation.

After Xinorbis scans the hard drive, you can analyze the disk with different “tasks” that display the disk information in three ways: Summary, Folder Properties, and Folder Structure. You can also search the data.

Summary

The Summary view gives you a quick overview of the scan results. It contains information such as the disk space wasted, the largest folder, or how much space each file category (programs, graphics, office, etc.) need.

Folder properties

The Folder properties have much more detailed information to offer.

Table view: Diagrams the space usage of the file categories

Type view: Breaks down the categories in file types (extensions)

Extensions view: Gives more detailed information about each file extension

Folders view: Does the same for directories

Magnitude view: Arranges the information according to file size

Dates view: Structures the display according to years and months (creation date)

History view: Shows you the amount of data that has been created at configurable time intervals

Top 101: Shows the top 101 space squanderers

Null: Identifies files with 0 KB

Note that the different views don’t just sort file names according to view topic. Each view presents the information in a suitable way and has its own diagram style. Often you can get more specific information by double clicking one of the entries.

Folder structure

The main purpose of the Folder structure task is to show you what percentage of the disk space is occupied by specific directories. On the left side, you have the main directories; on the right side, you can drill down in the folder structure.

Search

The search function can do more than the Windows Explorer search function provides. For instance, you can limit your search to a specific owner or files that exceed a certain size. You can also display how much space the files that match the search occupy. This can be useful if you want to know how much a certain file type requires.

Advanced disk analyzer

Aside from the Task views, there are four more “advanced” ways to analyze the disk data. The File Size Spread shows you how much space that files of a configurable file size occupy on the disk. Duplicate Files displays, well, duplicate files. Folder Detail is similar to the Folder Structure task except that it allows you to apply quite a few different filters (category, owner, file size, creation date, attribute, etc.).

Reports

Last, but not least, this powerful free disk analyzer offers a couple of nice reports in different file formats (HTML, XML, CSV, Text, Xinorbis). You can also access the data of former scans and analyze them again with Xinorbis.

Although this review might appear quite detailed, I didn’t cover all of Xinorbis’s features. There are many switches and handles that I didn’t cover. If you need a disk analyzer to examine your storage, you definitely should have a look at Xinorbis. I tested Xinorbis 5.1.2.

Xinorbis

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

Submitted by Robert Morris

Universal Viewer is a free file viewer that allows you to view many file types without having to have the application installed. A portable version is also available, so Universal Viewer can be part of your USB toolkit.

From the publisher:

Implemented view modes and corresponding file formats are:

• Text, Binary, Hex, Unicode: any files, of unlimited size (even 4Gb+ sizes are allowed)
• RTF, UTF-8: RTF and UTF-8 encoded texts
• Image: all general graphics formats: BMP JPG GIF PNG TGA TIFF… plus all formats supported byIrfanView/XnView external viewers
• Multimedia: all formats supported by MS Windows Media Player: AVI MPG WMV MP3…
• Internet: all formats supported by MS Internet Explorer: HTML PDF XML MHT…
• Plugins: all formats supported by Total Commander Lister plugins
• MS Office: all file types of MS Office (if installed): DOC DOCX XLS PPT…
• Converters: some types can be viewed as plain text: DOC DOCX PDF PPT ODT…

Application is fully Unicode-compatible and can be integrated into Windows Explorer’s context menu, so there is no problem to call it from anywhere in Explorer: right-click a file and select the “Universal Viewer” item. It can also be integrated into other popular file managers.

Universal Viewer

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

QTTabBar might be the first free Explorer extension that I will continue to use. It is lightweight and doesn’t slow down Windows Explorer. Even though the Open Source tool has quite a few features and settings, it can be used intuitively without studying a manual first.

After you install QTTabBar, you have to restart Windows Explorer. This makes not only the Explorer windows disappear and reappear but also all the other running applications. So it probably makes sense to close all applications before you install QTTabBar.

To make the tabs visible in Windows Explorer, you have to enable the QTTabBar toolbar through the Windows Explorer View menu (in Windows 7 and Vista, press the ALT key to make the Windows Explorer menu bar appear). QTTabBar has a customizable toolbar that you can also enable through the Explorer menu. You can access useful functions such as “close this tab” or “close all tabs except this one” through this tool bar.

The best way to get started is to access the tool’s options menu by right-clicking the tab bar. QTTabBar comes with many useful features that I can’t discuss fully in this post. In this review, I will only cover the features I like most.

Once you enable QTTabBar, the Explorer menu bar will no longer auto-hide. Thus you will have three new bars, one below the other, which steals a lot of space from your screen. However, you can just drag all three toolbars to the same row to save space. For this you have to first unlock the toolbars through the Explorer View menu.

The fastest way to open a new tab is by clicking a folder using the scroll wheel. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work in the Explorer navigation pane. However, you can just drag the corresponding folder (for example, a folder from your Favorites) to the tabs. To close a tab, you can click it again with the scroll wheel or press CTRL+W.

Very useful is that you copy files from one tab to another using drag-and-drop. This is one of the main reasons why I will keep using this tab extension tool because I think using Windows Explorer to copy and move files is somewhat cumbersome.

I also like the new down-arrow that appears when you hover over folders. If you click it, a small popup window with all files and subfolders will appear. This allows you to open a file without navigating to its folder. Hovering over the files shows a thumbnail preview.

QTTabBar has many keyboard shortcuts that can speed up your work in Windows Explorer. For instance, you switch between tabs with CTRL+TAB, or go back to the first level of the tab with CTRL+ALT+LEFT. For a full list of all shortcuts, see the QTTabBar options menu.

QTTabBar

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

In the last part of this series, I covered AutoAdministrator’s remote execution features. Today’s post will describe the remote editing functions.

Note: 4sysops readers get a discount on AutoAdministrator of $20 USD until the end of 2010, which means that you pay only $49 USD instead of the regular price of $69 USD. indicating that you are a 4sysops reader.

Remotely manage passwords

This is one of my favorite AutoAdministrator features. It allows you to verify, change, and reset passwords remotely on multiple machines. This function is especially useful if you want to change the local administrator password on all your machines. Since managing local passwords on multiple machines is somewhat cumbersome, most admins don’t change local administrator passwords often enough.

With AutoAdministrator, you can perform this important security task with a few mouse clicks. The verify function enables you to check if all computers received the new password.

The difference between changing and resetting the password is that with the first option you need to specify the current password of the corresponding account, whereas with resetting a password, you don’t have to know the current password. I recommend the use of the change function always because, after a password reset, the user will no longer be able to access security-related data such EFS encrypted files or Internet Explorer credentials.

Remote Registry editing

Another useful feature of AutoAdministrator is its remote Registry editing function. You can add or change the value of the Registry key types REG_DWORD, REG_SZ, and REG_EXPAND_SZ on multiple machines, regardless of the Windows version they employ. You can also read, delete, or copy REG_DWORD keys or values. AutoAdministrator doesn’t, however, allow you to browse the Registry. That is, you have to know the exact key name you want to edit. I recommend using the copy key name function of the Windows Registry editor. That way, you can just copy and paste those long key paths. Make sure that you delete the main key in the copied key path (for example, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE), which AutoAdministrator provides.

Remote file copy

AutoAdministrator’s File Management feature doesn’t really allow you to remotely edit files; however, you can copy files and folders to multiple remote computers, which serves the same purpose. Similar tasks are usually accomplished by using login scripts. The advantage of using AutoAdministrator instead is that you can copy files with admin rights to any location without much hassle. Moreover, you can be sure that the files reach their destination without delay. AutoAdministrator can create a directory structure automatically if it is not yet available on the remote machines. You can also configure the tool to overwrite existing files or delete files on multiple machines.

Remote edit ODBC configuration

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard for moving data from one type of database to another. You can use AutoAdministrator to query, copy, and delete a System DSN (Data Source Name). The System DSN, you want to manage, has to be installed on the PC where you are running AutoAdministrator. It is also possible to copy the corresponding drivers to remote computers, overwrite existing settings, and replace locked files during the next reboot. Be careful with this feature because AutoAdministrator has no "undo" function.

AutoAdministrator’s functions are fairly varied and help you solve many different Windows administration problems. It is like a spanner set. You might not know what you will need it for next, but you do know that it is an essential part of every toolbox. Considering AutoAdministrator’s low price, it is almost like a free tool. I think, it belongs in every Windows admin’s toolbox.

• Raffle: ManageEngine Desktop Central – Part 2: Features (2)
• Raffle: ManageEngine Desktop Central – Part 1: Overview (0)
• FREE: Workspace Manager Express – A roaming user profiles alternative (0)
• Spiceworks installation guide (1)
• Raffle: JiJi Password and Account Expiration Notification Tool (2)

A few days ago, SolarWinds released Permissions Analyzer for Active Directory, a new free tool that allows you to determine the effective NTFS permissions and share permissions for a network share and for a particular user or user group.

When a user has problems accessing a network share, the first thing to check is whether he or she has the appropriate NTFS permissions. The common way is to navigate to the folder and check the security properties with Windows Explorer.

Assuming that you follow common practice and only assign NTFS permissions to groups and not to single users, you can’t see the effective NTFS permission this way. Moreover, since groups can have other groups as members, it can get tricky in some scenarios to guess the effective permissions.

To view the effective NTFS permissions for a particular user or group, click “Advanced” in the Security properties and then click “Effective Permissions.”

So what can SolarWinds Permissions Analyzer do what you can’t do with Windows Explorer?

First of all, it is much quicker to access the effective NTFS permission with the tool because you don’t have to connect to the corresponding server and share. Instead, you can just enter the name of the share’s UNC path and the name of the user or group for which you want to calculate the effective NTFS permissions.

Second, the tool also displays the share permissions in a separate column and calculates the “total effective permissions” using the effective NTFS permissions and the share permissions. Newbie admins commonly, and mistakenly, believe that it is enough for a user to have effective NTFS write permissions to be able to write to files on a network share. If the user doesn’t also have the explicit share permission to change files, then access will be denied if he or she tries to modify or create a file.

Last but not least, Permissions Analyzer also shows you why a certain user has NTFS and share permissions on a share. In the screenshot, you see that the administrator account has share rights because it is in the Everyone group; it has NTFS permission because it is in the administrators group and also because the administrator account has individual NTFS rights.

SolarWinds Permissions Analyzer for Active Directory supports nested groups from multiple domains. You can configure multiple admin accounts, which allows Permissions Analyzer to access multiple domains to determine all group memberships to calculate the effective NTFS permissions.

Note that the tool might not work properly on a domain controller because domain controllers are not granted the so-called impersonation privilege by default. The manual has more information about this privilege and how to assign it to domain controllers. In general, it is not recommended to use the Permissions Analyzer on domain controllers. It is better to launch it on your desktop.

SolarWinds Permissions Analyzer for Active Directory

• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – Active Directory trusts – Sample question (0)
• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – Active Directory trusts (0)
• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – Active Directory Forests and Domains – Sample question (5)
• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – Active Directory Forests and Domains (0)
• How to synchronize Windows Server 2008 with an external time server (6)

In a previous article I discussed how to unlock locked files and folders using the Unlock IT. This utility can unlock a resource by closing the file/DLL handles that point at the locked resource or by terminating the processes that hold locks. Both of these approaches require modification of the current environment, which is not always possible. Just imagine, for example, that you need to replace a system file, but you just cannot terminate a system process. Is there a standard approach for this?

System files replacement is a standard operation in Windows. When you install a system update, you often get prompted to make a system reboot. As you may know, system files are physically replaced on reboot before starting the system services and acquiring locks for resources. You can utilize this approach, too, for your need to delete, move or rename locked resources. All boot actions are managed through the registry.

A free EMCO MoveOnBoot utility hides all the complex specification of boot action commands in the registry and provides you with a simple interface that allows defining delete, move or rename files/folders operations to be performed during the next reboot.

The standard Windows technology used in this tool has some limitations – for example, you cannot move a resource to another disk or manage resources on external drives. However, this tool is a good addition to your unlocking tool that can be used when it isn’t not possible to manage locked resources in any other way.

EMCO MoveOnBoot

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

Submitted by Igor Vinnykov

Since the first release of Windows 95 fifteen years ago Microsoft has released several generations of the Windows platform, but the well-known “Access Denied” error, which occurs when one attempts to modify, rename or delete locked file, is still there and it still confuses even experienced IT veterans. This error is an example of unfriendly error messages, as Windows only reports that the resource is locked by some applications, but doesn’t indicate which particular applications hold locks and doesn’t offer any solutions.

Free EMCO UnLock IT utility is one of the tools that helps you resolve problems with locked files and folders. Unlike the standard Windows behavior, this utility can report on the processes that hold locks to the analyzed resource and allows for removing these locks. So, the next time you get an “Access Denied” message, you can check the locked resource using EMCO UnLock IT to get information about the reason of the problem. You can analyze not only files, but also folders and even whole disks. In this case, the application shows all locked resources and processes that lock them. Another useful feature of the application is integration with Windows Explorer, which is activated by marking the appropriate checkbox on the status bar. If integration is enabled, you can perform the check/unlock operation for the selected resource from the Windows Explorer context menu.

If the analyzed resource is detected as locked, the application offers two options to unlock it. The first one allows closing all file/DLL handles pointing at a resource. The second one allows unlocking a resource by terminating the processes that hold locks. Depending on your needs, you can select one of these options, or use the Unlock Resource action that tries to close handles first and then asks for processes termination only if the first method didn’t make it possible to unlock a resource.

Locks detection and the unlocking methods used in this tool are quite effective and will allow you to resolve many problems with locked resources. But, of course, there are cases when no unlocking tool can help you, especially if you have to deal with rootkits, viruses and so on. In such rare cases you can use good old tricks such as booting from external drives and cleaning up files manually.

Happy unlocking to everyone!

EMCO UnLock IT

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

Many batch renamer tools exist. Michael recently reviewed ReNamer which offers enough features for most users. However, the feature king of the batch renamer tools certainly is 1-4a Rename. If you visit the tool’s homepage, you will see that this tool is quite old and hasn’t been developed further in recent years. Nonetheless, it runs perfectly under every newer OS including the 64-bit versions.

What does this batch renamer offer you that others do not? When you launch the tool for the first time, nothing spectacular awaits you:

On the left side, you see different renaming options; on the right side, you see a list of the files in the current directory. When you create a renaming rule, you instantly see which files get renamed, the new names of the files, whether the new name conflicts with an existing or a renamed file, and whether the desired file name is illegal. There is also a column that warns you if the renamed file is longer than 65 characters, but this is of no concern with recent Windows versions.

1-4a Rename shows its real potential only when you press F2 to switch to expert mode. Take a look at the additional features this mode offers:

These added fancy options help you control the renaming. For example, one option includes the size of the file in the new name. Another function inserts a time string or a random character in the desired name. The tool can also increase or decrease the length of the file name. It offers over a dozen functions more—too many to write about here.

Another valuable feature of 1-4a Rename is the extremely fast sorting ability. You can influence the sorting algorithm by telling the tool to sort by extensions first and then sort by the file name, or sort by file name length, for example.

If you want to do a batch rename of a few files and you are working with complex renaming rules, there is no better tool than 1.4a Rename. Its performance and features are unmatched so far, and if anything should go wrong it also has an undo function.

You can download the batch renamer tool 1.4a Rename here.

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

You can simply drag and drop files and folders to the ReNamer interface. This allows you to rename multiple files at different locations in one go. You can also apply multiple file renaming rules at once.

Probably the most important feature of ReNamer is that you can preview the results before actually renaming multiple files. I recommend the use of this function always because reversing the renaming of multiple files is often quite difficult.

I tried the installable version of ReNamer on Windows 7 and the portable version on Windows PE 3.0.

Rules to rename multiple files with ReNamer

Insert: Insert specified text into the filename.

Delete: Delete a portion of the filename (by character positions).

Remove: Remove all occurrences of specific text.

Replace: Replace text occurrences.

Extensions: Change file suffixes.

Strip: Remove predefined character sets (numbers, for example).

Case: Capitalize, to lower case, to upper case, invert serialize.

Serialize: Put file names into an alphanumeric order.

Cleanup: Clean up file names to conform to naming conventions.

Translit: Transliterate non-English characters.

RegEx: Use regular expressions.

PascalScript: Use a Pascal/Delphi script.

UserInput: Use the entered list to rename multiple files.

The Bulk Rename Utility and Ant Renamer are two comparable tools that I reviewed a while back and are now also in the 4sysops list of free file management tools.

ReNamer

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

When you start the application for the first time you are asked if you want to create a profile. Without a profile you can’t do anything, so you should create one. In the next dialog window you have to choose between a backup and a synchronization profile. No matter how you decide, you will have to make additional specifications. This time the options are manifold:

To synchronize two folders you have to define a source and a destination folder and choose how the synchronization tool handles subdirectories. You should also check the advanced and copy/delete tab to ensure the settings are in line with what you plan to do. If you just want to synchronize two folders you are finished now. SyncBack offers a lot more features, though: To view all of them you have to switch to expert mode. You can do that by clicking the “Expert” button on the bottom of the window. Now a few more Tabs will appear in the window, namely “Compression,” “FTP,” “Network,” “Background,” “Auto-close,” “Programs,” “Misc.” and “Compare Actions.” I don’t want to explain those any further, because you just want to synchronize folders, right?

Click on “Ok” and you’ll be asked if you want to make a dry run of the profile. This dry run doesn’t alter anything on the hard disk, it just displays what the tool would do. If you decide to run the synchronization job, the job window pops up:

Here you can start, modify or delete the current job or create a new profile. Besides that you can create a schedule or restore backups. Another purpose of this window is to provide an overview over all your profiles and their status.

There are also non-free versions of SyncBack: SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro. SyncBackSE extends the folder synchronization tool SyncBack with many useful features. SyncBackPro adds additional features on top of SyncBackSE. You can find a complete comparison of the different versions here. If you just need to synchronize folders SyncBack is probably enough for you, but as soon as the job gets very complex you might have to update to a commercial version. But compared to other folder synchronization tools the freeware version of SyncBack offers more possibilities than many other commercial software packages. And if you decide to buy SyncBackSE or SyncBackPro you’ll already know that you get excellent value for your money.

SyncBack

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

If any of the above points bugs you, you should check out TeraCopy. It solves all four issues.

Depending on your OS, file transfers between hard disks are up to 40% faster when using TeraCopy. The speed increase is only significant on locally attached disks, though. Copies to a network share are not speedier at all because network bandwidth is a limiting factor on modern hardware.

If TeraCopy encounters a problem during the copy process, it retries the copy a few times. If this still doesn’t solve the issue, TeraCopy just continues with the next file. A detailed file list in the TeraCopy window informs you of the status of every copied file. If you want to verify that the copied files exactly match the source files, you can have TeraCopy compare the checksums. Last but not least, if a copy job can’t finish (for example, due to a failed network connection), you can resume the job after the network connection is up again.

The tool neatly integrates in the Explorer menu and offers its services right where you need them. As you can see in the following screenshot, it has shortcuts for copying, moving, testing, and permanently deleting files.

If you want to make TeraCopy your default copy tool, you can register a “Copy Handler.” You can enable this feature easily in the Preferences menu. If you don’t like it, the tool also can undo the registration.

The Pro version of TeraCopy has additional features, such as favorites folders, and it allows the editing of the file list during a copy job. You also get free updates and priority support. But even without these Pro features, TeraCopy is a handy tool that speeds up the copy process and solves other Windows Explorer annoyances. TeraCopy is free for “home users”.

TeraCopy

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

When I tested Unlocker with an opened Word file, the tool had no problem unlocking the file. However, Windows 7 Explorer still complained that the file was opened in another program. Nevertheless, Unlocker’s delete function was able to remove the file. Note that files that you delete with Unlocker will not be moved to the Windows Recycle Bin.

Unlocker can also move, rename, and copy locked files. Also useful is that the free unlock tool can display all locked files in a folder and its subfolders. You can then select multiple locked files and delete them in one go.

Make sure that you download the correct version for your operating system. The 32-bit edition of Unlocker doesn’t work on Windows 64-bit.

Notice that McAfee’s Site Advisor reported that the publisher’s website (Cedrick Collomb) attempted to make unauthorized changes to their test computer by exploiting a browser security vulnerability. This is why I linked to another download site. Maybe their site was hacked or McAfee falsely interpreted the behavior of their website.

Also note that several antivirus tools identify the 64-bit version Unlocker as malware. This is expected with a tool that messes with Windows handles. It is interesting to note that the 32-bit version doesn’t trigger alarms. Unlocker has been available for quite some time and you can find it on all major download sites; thus, I didn’t worry about using it on my PC.

I tested Unlocker 1.9.0.

Unlocker

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)

7-Zip doesn’t offer a portable version, but PortableApps.com provides a version of 7-Zip that works without installation. Actually, you have to install 7-Zip Portable once on your USB flash drive. But then you can launch the unzip software from Windows systems where 7-Zip hasn’t been installed.

This also works on Windows PE 3.0. However, I had one problem with the free unzip software. You can only extract archives to the same drive from where you opened the ZIP file. In most cases this should not be a problem, though. If you want to unzip the archive to a different drive, you only have to copy the zip file to this disk first.

7-Zip Portable

• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: Disk Defrag – A disk defragmenter (3)
• FREE: MyDefrag – Script defragmentation (4)
• FREE: Fast Duplicate File Finder – Find and delete duplicate files (2)
• Raffle: StarWind Enterprise CDP Edition – iSCSI SAN Storage Software for Windows (0)