Disks are cheap.  That means its easy to end up with lots of storage.  In turn, this means people don’t think about how they’re used as much as they used to.  A limitless supply of storage.      Inevitably, this means that disks become full of files that aren’t used - or are just plain junk.  People start to store files “because they can”...  music archives, videos they want to share, backups of their PC hard disks.  You name it, it finds its way onto the network. Now its possible to Spring clean network storage, quickly finding and removing the junk of duplicated and unused files      The ways people use - and abuse - storage are varied and complex.  Trying to predict them is impossible.  That’s why tools like SPACEWatch, that can carry out sophisticated analysis quickly, become essential.  With even quite small networks, there just isn’t time to try and do this manually.      A good example is the issue of duplication.  If you’ve not used SPACEWatch to clean-up your storage before, it is not unusual to find up to 30% of the files are actually duplicates.  On a typical 2-3TB network that means perhaps 500,000 files don’t need to be there and can be removed.      With that many duplicated files to find and remove, its important to be able to refine where the clean-up starts.  SPACEWatch does this by letting you filter which sets of duplicates you work on - for example, those taking up most storage, or that are least used.  It then lets you view these in more useful ways - for example by folder.      When you find the folders with the most duplicated files in them, you often find complete folders are duplicated.  And once you’ve found results of interest, SPACEWatch lets you share them with others - for example those who created them.  Email your finding, or save the results in a variety of formats to use in other applications. A typical network has thousands of different types of files to wade through      Most organisations have a “use policy” for IT - one that says what users can and can’t use IT for.  Typically this means certain types of files - music files, for example - shouldn’t be stored on the network.  They’re large and not usually business-related.  Why pay to store and back them up when they shouldn’t be there.      But what does “music file” mean?  It depends on the device and application being used to create and play them.  Some use mp3, others aac, yet others aif or more obscure types.  A better approach is to group together all the different file types that relate to each other - in this case “music files” - and then work with those groups.  This is what SPACEWatch lets you do.      Of course its still useful to work with individual file types.  A good example is “pst” files.  These are created by Microsoft Outlook to archive email messages and file attachments.  They can grow large - so people store them on the network. Similary, in organisation that use IBM Lotus Notes, large “nsf” files are commonly found on the network.  In both case you can work with these large files - or, using SPACEWatch Exchange or Domino Editions - work inside them.      SPACEWatch can analyze pst or nsf files so you can work with the file attachments stored inside them - just like files in normal folders.  That way you can extend your “use policy” to archived email.  In fact SPACEWatch Exchange and Domino Editions work with mailboxes and mail files on the server as well - so common approaches to managing unstructured data can be adopted across all the areas that files are stored. Time for a storage Spring clean Most networks are full of files that aren’t used, or are just plain junk. Now you can easily clean-up your storage. Highlights Product Guides • Manager’s Guide • Product Overview • User Guide Free Acrobat Reader is required to view these documents. © Sharpeware Ltd 2012 | All Rights Reserved | Home | Contact | Privacy statement Contact • Email • Telephone: USA +1 800 706-2939 UK +44 800 680-0669 Brussels +32-27470493 “ ” “ ” Accurately finding duplicates is easy with the Duplicates Search tool Work with related groups of file types in the File Types tool Work with individual file types in the File Types tool