SpaceMonger: Frequently-Asked Questions

A. Compatibility Questions:

1. What are SpaceMonger's minimum system requirements?

   • A PC-compatible computer with an Intel Pentium-compatible processor. We recommend an Intel Pentium 3 or 4, Intel Celeron, or AMD Athlon, running at at least 500 MHz.
   • 64 megabytes of RAM --- but we strongly recommend much more RAM if possible; if you're scanning large disks, you will need it. 256 megabytes may be sufficient for home computers; 512 megabytes or more is recommended for business computers; and one or more gigabytes is strongly recommended for large servers.
   • Minimum 640x480 in 256 colors. 800x600 or 1024x768 in truecolor (16 million colors) is strongly recommended.
   • A supported operating system (see next question).

2. What operating systems will SpaceMonger run on?

   We test on the following systems (these definitely work):

   Windows 95 (OSR1 and OSR2), Windows 98 (second edition) Windows NT 4.0 (SP4), Windows 2000 (SP3), Windows XP Home (SP2), Windows XP Pro (SP2), and Windows Server 2003.

   It should also work correctly on:

   Any release of Windows 95, 98, or ME, Windows NT 4.0 newer than SP4, any release of Windows 2000, and any release of Windows XP (note that users have reported a few visual bugs on Windows XP 64-bit edition).

   It may also work on:

   Windows Vista: We have started testing on Windows Vista. SpaceMonger v2.1 and v2.1.1 run on Vista, but with a few minor bugs; when SpaceMonger v2.2 is released, it will run on Vista properly.
   Wine: It may run under Wine, but your mileage may vary. We've had very mixed results trying to get it to run on Wine; sometimes it runs, and sometimes it crashes due to missing kernel APIs. When it runs at all, it runs very slowly.

   It does not work on:

   Windows 3.11 or older; Windows NT 3.51 or older; ReactOS 0.3 or older; Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, or any other Unix flavor, without emulation; MacOS or MacOS X without emulation.

3. Will there be versions of SpaceMonger for MacOS X or Linux?

   Hopefully. SpaceMonger is written to be very portable, but we need to be able to subsidize the costs of porting it. We will port to markets that we think are economically viable. That said, we'd very much like to see SpaceMonger ported to both of these platforms, so it may happen.

4. What kinds of disks can SpaceMonger analyze? Can SpaceMonger handle network disks?

   Most hard disks, floppy disks, and removable disks supported by Windows can be analyzed by SpaceMonger. SpaceMonger includes specific support for FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. Most network disks can also be analyzed without problems.
   
   Note that due to Windows' limited abilities at handling Linux/Unix soft-links, SpaceMonger may not correctly process soft-links if it encounters them on a network disk (this is a Windows bug, not a SpaceMonger bug).

5. Does SpaceMonger correctly handle hard links, mount points, filesystem junctions, compressed files, sparse files, and other NTFS filesystem tricks?

   Some better than others. SpaceMonger will correctly handle mount points and filesystem junctions by skipping them. Hard links will be reported as duplicate files, which may throw off totals. Sparse and compressed files should be reported correctly. Windows Vista's new soft links are not yet supported.

6. Can SpaceMonger handle non-English filenames?

   Yes! SpaceMonger is fully Unicode internally, so it neither knows nor cares if your files are named in English, French, Chinese, or Tagalog. They will be correctly sorted, analyzed, and displayed. (Note that due to OS limitations, you may get mixed results on Windows 95/98/ME when displaying non-English filenames; on Windows NT, 2000, or XP, you should always get correct results.)

7. I have a really huge disk. Can SpaceMonger scan it?

   Probably, if you have enough RAM. A good rule of thumb is that you should take the number of files on your disk and divide by ten to get the amount of kilobytes of RAM required to scan it. (You can divide that number by 1024 to get the number of megabytes of RAM required to scan it.) This is only a rule-of-thumb, and is usually accurate to within about 20%. In general, if you want to scan a disk with a terabyte or more, you should have at least one to two gigabytes of RAM to do it.

B. Installation Questions:

1. How do I install SpaceMonger?

   Download the "spcmn***.exe" file from our download page.
   
   (Note: You should always scan all of your downloads for viruses, no matter where the download comes from. Right-click on the "spcmn***.exe" file and click "Scan for Viruses" to make your virus scanner check it. It should be clean, but it's always important to check; better safe than sorry.)
   
   Double-click on the downloaded "spcmn***.exe" file to install it to your computer.

2. Do I have to install SpaceMonger? Version 1.4 let me just drop the program into any folder I wanted. or What's the difference between Roving Mode and Installed Mode?

   Yes, you have to run the installer once to unpack the program. That said, we understand that many people want to just copy the program to install it, so we offer what we call "Roving Mode" --- Roving mode is a special mode that SpaceMonger can be set to where it assumes that it needs to be entirely self-contained within its folder. When installed in roving mode, you can then copy or move the resulting folder anywhere you want --- to other folders, to other disks, to USB drives, to CDs, to network drives --- anywhere. All configuration information and everything else SpaceMonger needs to run will be stored only in its own folder.

3. Version 1.4 was free; version 2.1 tells me I have to register. What's registering?

   In short, v2.1 is a commercial product now, so it's no longer free. Registering is the process of buying a license to use the program. When you buy a license, you will receive a license key, an RSA-encrypted set of letters like ABCDEFG-HIJKLMN-OPQRSTU VWXYZAB-CDEFGHI-JKLMNOP, that you can feed into the program to tell it you legitimately purchased it. You can read more about our license policy and you can visit our store to buy a license right now.

4. Why isn't version 2.1 free when version 1.4 was?

   Because of the amount of work we put into it. Version 1.4 was written over the course of about three weeks total, and was little more than a hack that happened to do its job pretty well. Version 2.1 is the result of five years of research and development work, and designed to be a serious commercial product, scalable to the needs of large enterprises. Version 2.1 includes support, lots of documentation, and hundreds of new features. All that work can't come free. That said, many people have told us our $19.95 price tag is too low for how much value the program has. We recommend you download both programs from our download page and compare them; if you want to stick with the free version 1.4, go right ahead. (Just remember that we don't support it any more, so if you have problems, don't ask us, okay?)

5. I bought a license key; what do I do with it?

   Open SpaceMonger. It may give you the option of providing a license key right when you open it. But if it doesn't, look in the top-right corner of its window. You will see a button there with the SpaceMonger flying-rectangles logo on it and a a little down-pointing arrow. Click this button, and the click on "License Box". Then copy or type into this box your name, organization, and license key, exactly as provided to you in the e-mail you received when you bought your license key. If it's a valid license key, SpaceMonger will say "Valid license key!" and then you can click "OK" to close the License Box. Your license key will be saved in your personal configuration file, but be sure to keep that e-mail around in case you ever need the license key again.
   
   Warning: We at Sixty-Five will never ask you for your full license key --- if we ask you for anything, we will only ask for the last seven letters to ensure that you received the same key we have on file for you. Never give your full license key to anyone under any circumstances; if it gets released to the public, we may have to disable it in a future release, and we may at our discretion choose to issue you a new key. In extreme circumstances, we may have to terminate your license permanently, if you are found to be negligent in keeping your keys private. In no event will we refund purchases of licenses that were terminated because of negligence on the customer's part.

6. How do I uninstall SpaceMonger?

   If you're asking this about version 1.4, just drag its icon to the Recycle Bin and drop it in; it's that easy. Surprisingly, many people can't figure this out.
   
   If you're asking this about version 2.1, there are two possibilities. If it was installed in Installed Mode, go to the Windows Control Panel, in "Add/Remove Programs", find it in the list, and click "Remove". If it was installed in Roving Mode, simply drag its folder to the Recycle Bin and drop it in.
   
   Note that uninstalling SpaceMonger via "Add/Remove Programs" will delete everything related to SpaceMonger, including your personal configuration settings, so only do this if you absolutely need to.

7. How do I upgrade SpaceMonger?

   Upgrading SpaceMonger 2.1 is very easy. Simply download the latest version and run its installer, just like normal. The installer can tell when you're upgrading, and will automatically replace, add, or change the necessary files.
   
   Note that when upgrading a roving-mode installation, the installer cannot be as certain about the existing files as with an installed-mode installation, so it will replace everything, including your configuration file. If you want to save your configuration file first, see "How do I back up SpaceMonger?" below.

8. I'm using a standard installation. How do I back up SpaceMonger?

   SpaceMonger 2.1 is entirely contained within its own folder, except for your configuration settings. So backup is a one or two-step process. First, back up the "C:\Program Files\SpaceMonger" folder itself. Then, go into "C:\Documents and Settings" and go into your personal data folder (it will have your name or some generic name like "Owner"; it is not the folder named "Default" or "All Users"). Go into your "Application Data" directory and back up the "SpaceMonger" folder you see in there.
   
   Note that at present, the only file in the "SpaceMonger" folder is a single file named "config.xml". This file contains all of your personal configuration settings, and so it's really the only file you need to back up.

9. SpaceMonger is behaving erratically or My configuration is damaged; how do I reset it?

   Open the Windows "Start" menu, and click on "Run". Type:
   
   C:\Program Files\SpaceMonger -r
   
   and then press Enter. Nothing will seem to happen, but SpaceMonger knows that the "-r" flag means that it should reset your configuration file to defaults. Once your configuration is reset, you should be able to open SpaceMonger normally; if you can't, please ask about it in our forum or contact us.

10. SpaceMonger on my computer complains that it can't find its language files, and then just exits. How do I fix this?

    You have a damaged installation of the program; it's trying hard to find the files that contain the text for the currently-selected language, but it can't find them. Normally they live in the lang/ folder, and SpaceMonger is complaining that it can't find any of them. Your best bet is to reinstall the program; alternatively, you can try to find the missing folders (lang/, config/, and icons/, at a minimum) and move them into the same folder that contains SpaceMonger's .exe file.

C. Usage Questions:

1. How do I make the treemap bigger?

   We have a button just for that. In the top-right corner of the window is a fourth button next to the standard minimize/maximize/close buttons. This fourth button is the "Enhanced" button and toggles the layout of the window between simple and enhanced modes. In enhanced mode, SpaceMonger provides lots of additional tools for analyzing your data, such as the Statistics tab, the Find Bar, and the Selection Bar, as well as the left-side bar for selecting disks. In simple mode, all of these are removed, so SpaceMonger only displays the treemap and toolbars, giving the treemap a huge chunk of the window space.

2. What do the dotted areas of the treemap indicate?

   These areas have files that are too small to reasonably display, so SpaceMonger just displays a smooth dotted color. You can view these files by zooming in on the treemap.

3. How do I zoom in the treemap?

   There are a lot of different ways to zoom in and out:

   • Click on either the magnifying glass with the plus (+) symbol or minus (-) symbol in it to zoom in and out, respectively.
   • Click on the magnifying glass tool, and then use left-click in the treemap to zoom in and right-click to zoom out.
   • Press the plus (+) and minus (-) keys on the keyboard to zoom in and out, respectively.
   • Double-click on a folder to zoom in on it.
   • Click on a folder (or multiple folders) and then click the "zoom to fit" button below the magnifying glasses to zoom in on your selection.
   • If a file or folder is selected, you can click the up arrow below the magnifying glasses to zoom to the folder that contains it.
   • Last, but certainly not least, if you have a mouse with a wheel, you can move the mouse over the treemap and then spin the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

4. How do I pan (scroll) left or right in the treemap when it's zoomed in?

   There are a lot of different ways to pan around the treemap:

   • Use the arrow keys on your keyboard.
   • Select the "pan tool" (the hand icon), and then click-and-drag with the pan tool in the treemap.
   • Hold down the "Alt" key on your keyboard, and with it held down, click-and-drag in the treemap.
   • If you have a middle mouse button, click-and-drag with the middle mouse button in the treemap.
   • If you have a mouse wheel, press down on the mouse wheel in the treemap and then move your mouse around to pan.
   • Last, but not least, you can use the scrollbars beside the treemap to pan.

5. Can SpaceMonger be started from the command-line?

   Yes! Go into SpaceMonger's directory and type "SpaceMonger --help" to see a complete list of supported operations.

6. That bar at the bottom that sometimes shows files that I selected --- how do I make that bar appear or disappear?

   At the bottom of the window, in the status bar, is a button with two arrows on it. Click this button (or anywhere on the status bar to the right of it) to show or hide the "Selection Bar".

7. Why does the Selection Bar only display one folder when I select it? Shouldn't it display all the files inside that folder?

   No. The purpose of the Selection Bar is to display the current explicit selection, the files you specifically click on. The files contained inside those folders are implicitly selected --- you didn't click on them, so they're not listed.
   
   This is not an accident of design; it's very intentional. The Selection Bar allows you to construct very complicated selections of files and folders, adding some and removing others, and then operating on them (copying them, moving them, deleting them) as a group. Showing all the files contained within each selected folder would make the display too confusing, so they're omitted for clarity.

8. Why is the "Find" button always disabled?

   You have SpaceMonger in Simple Mode. In the top-right corner of SpaceMonger's window, click the button with four squares in it to return to Enhanced Mode, which supports many additional features such as the Find Bar, the Selection Bar, the Statistics tab, and the Favorites list, among others.

9. How does the Find Bar work?

   The Find Bar, which can be shown or hidden by clicking on the "Find" button, allows you to perform very fast sophisticated searches through the scanned data. You can construct searches limited by a file's most recent modification date, by its size, by its name, or by its attributes (mode). In the Find Bar, choose a filename to search for (see next question), a date range, and a file size range, and then click the "Go" button. The results of the search will be displayed in the Selection Bar at the bottom of the window.

10. How do I type filenames into the Find Bar?

    The Find Bar is designed to be very smart about filename searches, and supports a variety of different ways to specify filenames. The filename edit-box can be set to one of two modes by clicking on the little wrench icon above it: With the wrench highlighted, the filename box is in regex mode (see below); and with the wrench deselected, the filename box is in standard mode (wildcard mode).
    
    In standard mode, SpaceMonger will search for filenames as they are typed, optionally allowing wildcards to specify unknown parts of filenames. The supported wildcards are star (*), which indicates that zero or more unknown characters can be filled in there, or question-mark (?), which indicates that one unknown character can fill in that spot.
    
    If no wildcards are used in the filename, the typed name will be treated as a fragment, meaning that it will match any part of any existing name. For example, if you type "geo" into the box, SpaceMonger will find any file with "geo" in its name somewhere, including "Geo.doc", "George.txt", and "volcanicgeology.jpg". If you type "txt" in the box, SpaceMonger will find all of your text files, as well as "cartxtra.log".
    
    If the box is left blank, SpaceMonger will find all files. This is useful if you want to find files of a particular size or date and don't really care what their names might be.
    
    Wildcards may be used to indicate omitted characters in filenames. When a wildcard is used, SpaceMonger will match your description exactly as written. For example, if you search for "geo*", SpaceMonger will find "Geo.doc" and "George.txt" but not "volcanicgeology.jpg". If you search for "geo*.txt", SpaceMonger will only find "George.txt". If you search for "*.txt", SpaceMonger will find all of your text files, but not "cartxtra.log". If you search for "??.doc", SpaceMonger will find all Word documents with only two characters in their names.
    
    In addition to all this, you may use the special keywords "and", "or", and "not" to construct more complicated searches. (You may also use parentheses to override the natural precedence of these operators, which is "or" being lowest, "and" in the middle, and "not" being highest.) So, for example, you could say "(george or larry) and jpg" to find JPEG files with "george" or "larry" in their names. Each term joined by one of these operators is a filename fragment or wildcard pattern, as described above.
    
    For even more sophisticated filename searches, you can use regex mode (see next question).

11. How do I use regex mode in the Find Bar?

    Regex mode allows the use of full regular-expressions in the Find Bar. Regex Mode is enabled by clicking on the wrench icon above the Find Bar.
    
    When enabled, regex mode supports the following operators and operands:

    abc		A literal "abc" (case-insensitive)
    [a-z]		A character class: a single character in the given range. Named character classes as found in Perl or PHP are not supported. Negated character classes, such as [^0-9] and [a-z^m-p] are supported.
    .		Matches any character.
    r*		Matches zero or more r.
    r+		Matches one or more r.
    r?		Matches zero or one r (an optional r).
    r{2,4}		Matches two to four r.
    r{2,}		Matches two or more r.
    r{,4}		Matches at most four r.
    rs		Matches an r followed by an s
    r|s		Matches r or s or both.
    ^r		Matches r, but only at the start of the name.
    r$		Matches r, but only at the end of the name.
    (r)		Parentheses may be used to override precedence.

    Backslashes may be used to escape operator characters.
    
    A full description of how to use regexes is way beyond the scope of this FAQ. We recommend buying Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl, or any of a dozen other good books on the topic available at your local bookstore or Amazon.com.

12. Why does the cluster size of my disk seem incorrect?

    With NTFS disks and network disks, SpaceMonger makes artificial assumptions about cluster sizes. Why? On NTFS disks, NTFS has the ability to pack small files together in single clusters, which is great for saving space, but bad for reporting space usage. Windows does not directly report actual sizes via the standard Win32 API, so SpaceMonger effectively has to guess actual sizes based on what it knows of the file. Likewise, on network disks, Windows doesn't report any cluster size information (well, not exactly, but the information that comes back is usually incorrect), so SpaceMonger ignores network numbers as well. In both cases, SpaceMonger makes an educated guess about how to compute files' physical sizes based on their logical sizes and their compression/sparseness flags. We are researching better ways to provide more precise numbers for NTFS disks in future versions of SpaceMonger.

13. SpaceMonger says it can't scan a folder named "System Volume Information." What's in that folder, and why can't SpaceMonger scan it?

    This folder is created by Windows to store your System Restore Points in. This folder is usually found on NTFS disks on Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003. This folder is usually very large, around 10% of your disk, and by default, Windows protects it from all forms of access. This was an unfortunate design decision on Microsoft's part, but it's what they did, and there's no indication that they're going to change it in Windows Vista.
    
    On Windows XP Home, you cannot easily alter this folder so that SpaceMonger can scan it; XP Home is missing certain essential security and administration tools that would allow you to enable access to this folder. (Note that some of our users have offered workarounds for this problem; go read this forum thread if you're interested in seeing them.)
    
    On Windows XP Pro or Server 2003, this can be fixed, but doing so is convoluted and far from easy. In the Windows Explorer, open the drive that contains this folder. If you haven't already enabled "Show Hidden Files and Folders" (click the "Tools" menu, then "Folder Options", then "View", and then click the radio button next to "Show hidden files and folders"), do so now so that the "System Volume Information" folder appears in the Explorer window. Right-click on "System Volume Information" and select "Properties." Click on the "Security" tab at the top (this vital tab is missing in XP Home). Click "Add." Type "Administrators" in the box and click "OK." Select "Administrators" in the list and then make sure that "Read" and "List Folder Contents" are both checked in the box below. Click "OK" to accept these changes. If you did everything right, and you haven't been intentionally blocked by a system administrator or virus, then you should now be able to browse into the "System Volume Information" folder, and SpaceMonger can scan it too.

14. The font in the treemap is too small for me or the font in the treemap doesn't work well with Asian text. How do I make it bigger or more legible?

    Click on "Setup" / "Fonts". Next to "Treemap font," choose a different font and/or a larger point size. The default font is "Small Fonts," at 9 points, which works very well for European languages but somewhat poorly for non-Roman scripts like Arabic and Japanese. If you're using a non-Roman language, you should use a font that works better with it, like Arial at 12 points. You may want to also consider turning on ClearType in the Windows Control Panel, if that's an available option on your computer; turning on ClearType may make some fonts easier to read.

15. What does power-select mode do or why does file selection behave strangely on my computer?

    When power-select mode is enabled, the standard selection tool (the arrow tool) behaves differently. Power-select mode is enabled or disabled by clicking the arrow-and-wrench icon on the left side of the display. When in power-select mode, you cannot accidentally deselect files by clicking in an empty part of the display, and clicking on a file or folder toggles its inclusion in the current selection. Power-select mode exists as a safety feature for power users that want or need to create complex selections.

16. Gyah! I accidentally set SpaceMonger to display Chinese! How do I change it back to English when I can't read anything?

    Relax. Look at the top of the window and find the button that has a red checkmark in it (it's probably the 9th button). Click that button. In the bottom-left corner of the window that comes up, you will see a drop-down box with a flag in it and the name of the current language. If you click that box, you can choose a new language. Then hit the "OK" button on that dialog box, which is the button with the green checkmark in it.

17. Is there a list of shortcut keys or accelerator keys or hotkeys that I can press to control SpaceMonger from the keyboard?

    Yes! In SpaceMonger, click on "Help" and then "Keyboard Shortcuts" for a complete list of shortcut keys.

18. What's the difference between "Full Rescan" and "Refresh All"?

    When SpaceMonger performs a "Full Rescan", it clears all previously-scanned data before it starts; this is the same as clicking on the disk for the very first time. When SpaceMonger performs "Refresh All," it merely updates each folder, one at a time, to reflect the current disk's status. "Full Rescan" is likely to be faster; but "Refresh All" is less disorienting.

19. What's the difference between the five map-layout modes (at the bottom of the map toolbar)?

    These are the five map-layout modes, in order:

    • Physical map: Each file is sized according to the amount of physical disk space that it takes up; this is equivalent to sizing each file by the number of square millimeters of storage that it occupies.
    • Logical map: Each file is sized according to the number of bytes that it appears to be to the user and to applications, regardless of how much physical space it actually uses. The logical map's numbers match the numbers you see in directory and folder listings.
    • Uniform map: In a uniform map, all files are the same size. This is useful for comparing directories and folders by the number of files they contain, rather than by the sizes of those files.
    • Log map: This is somewhere between the logical map and the uniform map; files are sized by the logarithm of their logical file sizes. This causes large files to be larger than small files, but not much larger, so that directories can be compared by both count of files and by bytes, at a glance.
    • Directory-weighted map: This map is heavily oriented toward understanding the structure of your filesystem. Files are relatively insignificant in this layout, and folders (directories) are very, very significant (much larger by comparison). This doesn't tell you much about how big your files are, but it can tell you a lot about how deeply your folders are nested and where.

20. Are there any interesting tips or tricks I should know about?

    Try these:

    • Most things display little yellow tips if you leave the mouse hovering over them.
    • Most things display context-sensitive popup menus if you right-click on them.
    • When you have a bunch of files listed in the Selection Bar, click on one of them. If you hit Ctrl+A, you can rapidly highlight all of the files in the Selection Bar, and Ctrl+Shift+A will unhighlight all of them.
    • The Selection Bar can be opened and closed by clicking anywhere on the entire Status Bar, not just the little double-arrow button.
    • The slider bar below the pie chart makes the pie chart spin! It can be easier to view from some angles than others.
    • You can click on bars in the histogram, not just on slices in the pie chart.
    • "Select All" and "Select All Files" can be very slow on very large disks, and can require additional RAM too. Be patient while you wait for SpaceMonger to select them all.
    • SpaceMonger includes a few easter eggs; see if you can find them!

D. Miscellaneous Questions:

1. I think I found a bug! How do I report it?

   The best place to report bugs is in our forum. We have a special area dedicated to bug reporting. Before you report it, though, please read the list of known bugs and make sure you have the latest version; there's no sense in reporting a bug we already know about or have already fixed.

2. I have a great idea for a new feature! How do I suggest it?

   We have a section of our forum dedicated to feature suggestions. Post your new ideas right there, and we'll be sure to see them. But before you post, read our list of most-often-requested new features; the feature you want to suggest might be one we're already planning to add.

Is there a frequently-asked question that you think should be answered here but isn't? If so, please tell us! You can either add your suggestion in a special part of our forum for new FAQ questions, or you can contact us directly and ask it in private.