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Search for Files and folders that changed their Location
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hmadsen |
I would love if we could search for files that have been moved (folder/file path changed) in a storage location (given a specified timeframe). Ideally this would be done by creating a snapshot and then doing a snapshot compare, or by importing a previously-generated file listing as a comparison.
Please consider this as a potential feature!
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Team TreeSize
Status changed to: Open
Team TreeSize
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Team TreeSize
Status changed to: Under review
Team TreeSize
Using the feature "Scan > Compare with Snapshot" "Scan > Compare with path" you can already see the differences between two versions of a file system tree.
What is not yet included is a detection which files of folders have been moved, but this is not an easy task. Is the comparison feature sufficient for you? If not, we would like to know more about your use case so that we can implement the feature in the best possible way based on our customers' requirements. In what role do you need this feature? Why do you need this feature? What are the exact tasks you would like to accomplish with the feature?
hmadsen
hi!
just capturing new folders wouldn't work for my needs - I work in information management, and part of my work involves doing file migrations from one area of our system to another. Generally, if I am doing a migration there will be two stages to the migration itself - the initial round where the majority is captured, and then, because there is usually testing and validation before the go-live, a delta migration to capture changes that have been made in the meantime.
Treesize as it is now is SUPER helpful for looking for files that have themselves changed (looking for SHA256 differences, as an example, or new folders), but sometimes people will move their files around too, and trying to capture those changes can be tricky because it doesn't always involve changing the content of the file itself.
To my way of thinking, this could be simple enough in Treesize if the filepaths (folder plus filename) were captured in a snapshot and then compared to a list of folderpath/filenames, with the results filtered for unique values.
Alternatively, you could pull SHA256 values for all files and cross-reference that with the comparison of early vs later filepaths to capture any switches in location. I've tried doing this type of comparison in Excel but have had issues in the past with it not always recognizing textual duplicates with an especially large dataset, hence my request for this feature in Treesize. :)
That would be my use case - those delta migrations.
It would also be helpful to be able to do periodic audits during departmental file re-organizations in case someone forgets where something was moved to and does not recall the name of the file. Our project is large enough that some teams are trying to prepare for their portions of the implementation by cleaning up their content beforehand, so being able to provide that audit trail would be very helpful in that use case as well.
Please let me know if you need any further details/explanation from me!
Team TreeSize
Thank you for the clarifications and explanations. Your use case is interesting and valid. However, it is out of scope for a tool like TreeSize.
This feature requests fits better to our enterprise level disk space and file management tool SpaceObServer, which keep the entire file system with metadata and historic data in a database. Based on this, it should be possible to implement the requested feature.
I will therefore move this feature request from TreeSize to SpaceObServer.