CorzSpaZio
A drive space monitor that works..
How much free space is left?
Welcome to CorzSpaZio (pronounced: Cor-zSpaT'chio), a program that lets you know, at-a-glance, exactly how much free space is left on your hard drives, and other storage media. In case you wondered, "Spazio" is Italian for "Space". Clever, huh?CorzSpaZio is unashamedly based on Disk Space Pro, but better. Disk Space Pro, by Peter Pearson (who's site is sadly long gone, though DSP downloads are still scattered around the net) is, or rather was, my favourite disk space monitoring utility. Now, of course, that accolade belongs to CorzSpaZio.
I always seem to be running out of hard drive space, and find myself having to keep an eye on exactly how much of it is left, and where. Hard drives still aren't cheap enough, and so I use this tool a lot. And any tool I use a lot, has to be right..
CorzSpaZio displays important information about all Windows fixed disks, removable, optical and network drives, as well as RAM Disks, even unknown disks. Everything is configurable. Just like Disk Space Pro, it doesn't continuously prod your drives for details, but always has them on-demand, when you need them.
You can leave CorzSpaZio running at all times, toggling it from its tray icon, enabling you to better manage the resources on your various drives; especially when juggling disk space, awaiting a new batch of blank DVD's, or maybe considering yet another new hard drive.
How does CorzSpaZio work?
CorzSpaZio's operation is very simple. The main GUI/window is a list of the various storage media on your system, how big they are, and how much space is left on them. When you launch it, or click "Refresh" (F5), CorzSpaZio quickly scans (or rather, queries) your system's storage devices, and displays its findings in a regular "details" type list..How is it better than Disk Space Pro?
Don't get me wrong; I like Disk Space Pro. A few years back, I literally spent an entire day looking for disk space monitors that would do the job, and do it the way I wanted; simple, unobstrusive, and resource-friendly. I tested dozens of different utilities. Disk Space Pro was the very best of the bunch, in my opinion, and for a couple years I used it every day, though still occasionally searching for something that *really* worked the way I wanted. It's a great wee tool, and was a must-have Startup Item.
CorzSpaZio shares many features with Disk Space Pro; drives appear in a list view, with columns you can click to sort the data (and click again if you want to see the data temporarily reverse-sorted). You can choose to show and hide a variety of different drive types; fixed, removable, optical, and so on, and the totals are clearly displayed, especially the total free space, in both numeric and percentile form.
But CorzSpaZio goes much further; allows you to resize those colums permanently, as well as re-order the columns by simple drag and drop, and have all that customization remembered, for next time. These extras are things I always wanted in DSP, though perhaps not enough, on their own, to warrant a ground-up rewrite of one of my favourite programs.
However, Disk Space Pro has some annoying quirks. Without any reason it would, sometimes many times a day, disappear from my desktop and system tray altogether, and yet, as process explorer revealed, runs in the background, window-less and eating resources (admmittedly, not a lot); needing force-quit and restarted, which was annoying. To be fair, it hasn't had an update since 2001, so it's highly likely Windows evolving is a factor. The GUI is bulky, too, with all that empty space in it. These things more than any other, made me want to get under the hood with a coding spanner.
Also, I wanted some extra features for my own drive space monitor. For instance, I want to be able to double-click on a drive, and open that drive. CorzSpaZio does that - and clicking on the Total: row, opens My Computer, or whatever you call it on your system (It opens in your normal folder view mode, by the way, SHIFT-Click to force open in folder pane mode). You can also right-click on a drive and do the same thing from a menu, as well as empty that drive's Recycle Bin. The same menu on "My Computer" (or whatever you call it) enables you to empty all the volume's trashes, which is basically the same as emptying the trash from your desktop's trash icon, if you have such a thing. I also thought it might be cool to have my disk space monitor email me when things got critical, so CorzSpaZio does that, too.
Also, I always felt that F5 should do a refresh in Disk Space Pro, and right up until I stopped using it, would do it instinctively, in error; so CorzSpaZio does that, too, amongst other wee tricks; like..
- Title Bar and System Tray disk space information.
- Fully customizable list colouring, including alternate colors.
- At-a-glance notification of your biggest cache of space.
- Automatic low-space checking, with optional alerts.
- Low-space volumes can get special warning icons.
- Customizable alert threshold, in GB, MB or % (percentile) form.
- Optional number rounding for ultra-small displays.
- Get alert emails when space levels reach critical.
- Customizable warning icons (load icons from .exe, .dll or .icl files).
- Multiple options for skipping certain drives/types.
- Direct access to your drives from within the interface.
- Empty trashes from the drive's context menu.
- Drag & drop audio alert (WAV) import.
- System Tray GUI-Activation, with full sensitivity control.
- All the controls have handy mouse-over ToolTips.
- Column order, size and sort are remembered.
- Smart-Window™ dynamic positioning system!
- And more!
CorzSpaZio options..
You can get to all of your CorzSpaZio preferences from the GUI's options tab. Either Ctrl-Tab (move to next tab) or click the "Options" button to get there. Inside there are four simple preference sections.
Types..
Here you can choose which kinds of drives to display info for; Fixed Drives, Network Drives, RAM Drives, Optical Drives (Blu-Ray, DVD, CDROM, etc), and Removable Drives (like flash drives, thumb drives, and floppies), and even Unknown Drives, if any should pop up.Although floppy drives are technically "removable" drives, it's really only the disk itself that's removable, and so you can also choose whether or not to display information for floppy drives, the latter preventing annoying floppy drive access when there are no floppy disks present.
You can also choose whether or not to display information for empty drives (e.g. DVD drives with no disks in them will appear as empty). Check or unckeck what you need.
List..
Here you can set how you want your list view to look. Choose whether or not to use "GB" values (otherwise, everything is in Megabyte values), totals, gridlines, and drive icons, as well as custom icons, if your drive has any (see tips for more details). I added number rounding, too, so "25.34 GB" can be displayed as "24 GB", if you prefer.This is also where you can set the foreground and background colors - click the color boxes to choose a color using the system color picker. The alternate row coloring can be set manually, too, or else you can let CorzSpaZio calculate the color automatically, based on your slider setting (the higher the level, the darker the alternative color).
Note: Using the color slider overrides the alternate color box's manual setting, and vice-versa.
Also Note: If you set any custom colors in the color picker, they will be remembered for next time. Dontcha just hate it when programs forget!
At-A-Glance..
The At-A-Glance settings control the information you get when you look at CorzSpaZio or its tray icon, and how prominently that information is presented.You can choose to have the total space, as well as the drive with the largest cache of free space displayed in CorzSpaZio's Title Bar and System Tray icon ToolTip. You can also give that drive a special icon in the list, so you can find it at-a-glance.
There's handy ToolTips for all CorzSpaZio's controls, so you can see how to use them, at-a-glance. This is also where you control CorzSpaZio's cool mouse hover activate functionality. Basically, if CorzSpaZio is burried behind lots of windows, you can hover your mouse pointer over CorzSpaZio's System Tray icon, and CorzSpaZio will jump to the front. Simple, but effective.
Finally, you can control the hover sensitivity, that is; how responsive CorzSpaZio is to your mouse hovering over its System Tray icon. Set that all the way to the left (1) and you will have to move the mouse over the icon for a good second to get CorzSpaZio to appear. Set it all the way to the right (10) and CorzSpaZio will jump to the front almost instantaneously.
Low Space..
This is where you tell CorzSpaZio exactly what you mean by "Low Space", how often to check for that, as well as exactly what to do if this situation ever occurs on any of your drives; displaying a special icon in the list (you can select your own icon for this) and/or giving an audio alert of some kind. CorzSpaZio can even mail you about it. Click the mail icon to set your mail sending (smtp) preferences (see the image, below) - highly useful, both at home or away.For audio alerts you can specify a frequency value, in Hz, from 37 to 19999, which will emit a beep of that frequency from your PC speaker, if you have one. Alternatively, you may specify the path to a WAV file to use as your audio alert. You can keep a folder of wavs just for CorzSpaZio, which will be automatically added to your audio alert drop-down. Simply create a folder called "wavs", put it next to CorzSpaZio.ini, and put some wav files in it. A few samples (no pun intended!) are included in the distribution.
Drag and drop WAV files directly onto the audio alert input, to have them automatically imported to your wavs folder, tested and loaded, ready-for-use. You can also test any audio alert yourself, by clicking the green play (triangle) icon.Note: Audio alerts only occur during manual operations, not auto-checks, and alert mailing occurs only during auto-checks, not manual operations, and at most once an hour (by default - you can set this, though note; CorzSpaZio won't auto-mail more than once every thirty minutes about a particular drive, nomatter what you set**).
Note: To use the mail function, you need to have free, unauthenticated access to an smtp (mail) server. You can use any local mail transport, e.g. a sendmail running on a computer in your network (probably a Linux rig), your ISP's mail server (probably), or any other smtp server you have free access to. CorzSpaZio won't do smtp login, because that's a whole can of worms a disk monitor shouldn't be getting into, and you shouldn't need that. Even my gmx.net account allows free, unauthenticated sending from a known IP (collecting mail once via POP gets you "known", a-la pmpass).
CorzSpaZio uses a plain text ini file to store your preferences, though as all the settings are built-in to the options tabs, it's unlikely you will need to look at that. The drive type icons can be hacked (though there's really no need with custom icons - see tips for more details), but that's about it. Instead, I went to town with the preference tabs. Enjoy!
** Okay, technically, this is possible. For example, if CorzSpaZio sent a mail about drive G: at 10.30am, and at 10.45am, drive E: becomes critical, CorzSpaZio will mail you about it right away (so long as it hasn't already mailed you about this drive within the last hour), and in that mail, of course, all your critical drives will be listed.
Mail (& exit..)
As well as the mail function mentioned previously, CorzSpaZio has a special command-line switch you can use, which is simply mail, e.g..C:\path\to\CorzSpaZio.exe mail
This launches CorzSpaZio, instructing it to immediately check the available disks, and if any are critically low on space, send an alert email, and then promptly quit. This is designed for scripting and scheduling. Note, if your regular preference is to not send mail - this switch will temporarily override that setting, and won't interfere with your normal usage. Please do read the smtp sending notes, above.
Portable Usage..
Like most of my Windows tools, CorzSpaZio features Auto-Portability™, and can run in a completely portable state; handy for thumb drives, secure stations, DVD-R media, or wherever else you might need a portable disk space monitor and want to keep the settings locally, next to the program itself.In fact, to activate portable mode, that's all you do - place your CorzSpaZio.ini right next to CorzSpaZio.exe. Normally, its ini file lives here..
C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\corz\corzspazio
On Vista, here..
C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\corz\corzspazio
Move or copy the file next to wherever you put CorzSpaZio.exe. If CorzSpaZio finds CorzSpaZio.ini next to itself during launch, it switches to portable mode and looks no further.
Portable switch..
If you can't be bothered looking for the ini file, or don't have any old settings you need to keep, CorzSpaZio has a special portable activation switch you can use, which is portable, e.g..C:\path\to\CorzSpaZio.exe portable
This switch simply instructs CorzSpaZio to install a fresh CorzSpaZio.ini right next to itself. You only need to do this one time (though it would do no harm to repeat); from then on CorzSpaZio is in portable mode.
As well as being useful for read-only media, diskless workstations and such, you can also use this portable functionality to run multiple copies inside the same desktop, even simultaneously, and each with completely unique settings. Handy.
Handy Usage Tips..
Tip: Like DSP and regular Explorer windows, you can double-click just to the left of a column header's divider to automatically resize the column to fit its content. Handy.Tip: Like many applications, you can use Ctrl+Tab to move between the program's tabs. Ctrl+SHIFT+Tab does the same, but in reverse. Switching to the main tab automatically refreshes it with any changes you may have made.
Tip: Click the tray icon to toggle CorzSpaZio's window. When it appears, it will automatically refresh its information, and re-sort the columns for you.
Tip: Hover your mouse over CorzSpaZio's tray icon for on-the-spot free space information (how much, and on what drive), useful when CorzSpaZio's window is minimized.
Tip: If you don't want to see a certain data column, slide its width all the way to zero!
Tip: To rename the column, Shift-click the column's title. If you want a blank column header, use a space character. It's no problem to have them all blank, if that's your bag.
Tip: Right-click the column headers for extra options. Same goes for the Audio alert combo (drop-down).
Tip: When you restore CorzSpaZio's window from the system tray, the drive list is automatically refreshed, so you don't have to. You can see it happen. Although it would be easy enough to have this happen quickly in the background, and then display the window, I prefer to watch it happen, so I know it did.
Tip: If you double-click an empty space in the list, it opens "My Documents" (or whatever you call it), and is the equivalent of "No Location", which I find poetic.
Tip: If you don't want to keep a folder of wavs just for CorzSpaZio, you can enter the full path to any wav file, and CorzSpaZio will use that, instead. And don't forget you can always use Hz values for simple PC beeps (37-1999Hz).
Tip: CorzSpaZio contains loads of icons you can use for warnings and such - use the arrow keys to scroll through the list - the icon display will update dynamically, so you can check them all out very quickly, and choose the one that suits you best. Note: icon resource ID#24 is Copyright The Microsoft Corporation. ;o)
Tip: If required, you can make your list window extremely small. When you switch to the options, CorzSpaZio will thoughtfully resize itself to fit the options tabs, and when you're done, resize back to the way you had it. Way more fun than I intended.
Tip: Enable Custom Icons in the list options, and CorzSpaZio will scan the drive's desktop.ini or autorun.inf for a custom icon entry, and if it finds one, and it's valid, CorzSpaZio will use it.
Itstory..
Embedded fresh from..http://corz.org/engine?section=beta/windows/corzspazio&source=version.nfo
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CorzSpaZio
a drive space monitor that works..
http://corz.org/windows/software/corzspazio/
(c) corz.org
itstory.. aka 'version history'.. aka 'changes'..
[known bugs at the bottom]
Key..
* Fixes
~ Changes
+ New stuff
Last updated: SUNDAY Oct 04, 2009
1.1 [current beta]
+ Big reductions to excecutable file size and memory usage.
~ Improved the recycle bin emptying. The (ToolTip) messages are more
descriptive, with proper pluralization and such. Also, the number of
items deleted is now reported in the message.
~ Recycling messages can now be placed in CorzSpaZio's title bar,
rather than a ToolTip, if you prefer (at-a-glance settings).
+ You can now choose whether or not CorzSpaZio has a taskbar entry.
This (enabled) is mainly for folk that like to use Win+M a lot, to clear
their desktop. Note: After doing a minimize all, CorzSpaZio will require
two clicks on its tray icon to be restored.
The preference for this isn't ideally placed, I know.
+ Added a "SizeAll" cursor to the draggable area, for the mouse hover.
* Fixed a minor bug where dragging a wav file onto the audio alert input
wouldn't update the input to the new wav file (nor test it) if the wav
had already been already imported. CorzSpaZio will now appear to behave
as if you had dragged a whole new WAV file, selecting and testing it,
whilst doing no actual import. In future, just select it form the list!
* Fixed a bug where choosing black did not reset the background color to
it's default setting, as it is supposed to.
+ You can now set the foreground (text) color for the list. This will be
useful if you prefer a light-on-dark type color scheme, or muted colors
or whatever you like.
~ The automatic Alt row colouring now uses proper luminance values to
shift the color darker, preserving the color scale accurately. In other
words, your alt color won't be so grey. Along with the new foreground
colouring, this makes the listview potentially quite pleasing on the
eye.
~ As a result, the slider range has been increased, it's now 1-240.
~ I re-arranged the List Options, to make the background color selection
more logical. Also, you can get to the color picker for the background
color without having to first enable the alt row color, which sounds
more like a bug-fix.
* Fixed a bug where the low space icon wasn't being set at launch time.
1.0 [current release]
Looking at my 2do list, I see I've done everything! CorzSpaZio is
officially v1.0, and out of beta.
+ A couple of additional minor internal error-checking routines.
0.9.9.6
+ Added a System Tray menu option to enable CorzSpaZio run at Windows
startup (user login), or not.
+ You can now change the name of the "Total:" row. There is no official
preference for this, it's strictly an ini-hack; totals_name=Total:
By the way, the "Label" (or whatever you've called that column) for
the totals, aka. "My Computer" is read directly from your system. If
you want to change THAT, change it on your system (i.e. rename the
My Computer icon).
+ You can now drag CorzSPaZio's window around by clicking in the area
between the "Option.." tab, and the "Refresh" button, basically, any
free space along the bottom. Handy.
+ You can now set custom colors in the system color picker, and they
will be remembered, even after you quit CorzSpaZio.
^ I've always felt this was a limitation in the standard AutoIt System
Color Picker usage, so if you want some of this action for your own
applications, I've dropped the dll code into the AutoIt forum.
* Fixed a bug where the recycler emptying messages could appear in the
*old* window position.
0.9.9.5
~ The options tabs now hide controls which do not currently apply.
This is more conventional, and less confusing, but it does mean
that you can no longer play with the wavs unless the audio alerts
have been disabled, and so on. It does make more sense, though.
+ You can now hack the values which CorzSpaZio considers to be
"unreasonable" threshold levels. This might be useful if you have
extremely large or extremely small drives, and want to avoid warnings.
Ini-only. Careful now.
+ Reduced memory usage.
* Various minor option tabs cosmetic fixes, placements, etc.
I setup a Windows 2000 VM (Virtual Machine) and discovered a few issues..
* Fixed the combos (drop-downs) in 2K (I must do this for my other apps!)
+ Added a couple of extra icons for internal use, icons which are not
available on Win2K (play icon and mail icon). I have put these before
the user icons, so you may have to re-select your favourite "most"
and warning icons. I slipped in a couple of blanks, too, just in case.
+ Added 256 color versions of all the icons, for Win2K users. They are
ugly without the transparent gradients and such, but they do work,
even when the user hasn't set higher icon display bit values.
This has increased the size of the executable some. But it's still
quite small, around 500KB (with UPX).
0.9.9.4
+ CorzSpaZio will now query the state of a recycle bin before emptying
it, and rather than do it anyway, will report that it was already empty.
This is fairly cosmetic, and only affects emptying individual recyclers.
Talking about cosmetics, I setup a Vista VM to test CorzSpaZio, and
it looks like I'll need to work some on the prefs dialogs layout, they
look a bit, erm, busy; especially the Low Space tab.
* Fixed a bug in the sort routines which would throw up occasional swaped
entries.
0.9.9.3 [1st beta release]
++ First public beta release. CorzSpazio is already fairly mature, feature-
packed, and has undergone quite a bit of testing. Enjoy!
There are still a couple of things I'd like to add yet, but it does
everything I need for now, and more. All comments welcome.
0.1 - 0.9.9.2 [private builds]
..
Current bugs and foibles:
These bugs are known, but for one reason or another (perhaps waiting for
something else to happen first) they will not be fixed just, yet..
* If a value is greater than 1TB, the standard windows sort routines
will mess up the sorting (the "," interferes) - will probably remove
the comma from the formatted display, so (in GB values) it would display
as "1045.56 GB", insead of "1,045.56 GB", for example.
* In Vista (and XP themes, both of which I don't use) the background of
the icon display in the options is not transparent - I'll hold off on
a fix, suspecting an IDE bug.
CorzSpaZio info complete!
That's about it for CorzSpaZio. Hopefully it should be intuitive to operate, and you won't have any problems running the program without any more help from me. But if you do have any questions, or issues, or find a bug; do feel free to leave a comment below.CorzSpaZio download..
Feel free to download and use CorzSpaZio. If you discover any bugs, please do let me know about them!Note: You will need a unicode capable Windows® system to run CorzSpaZio, that is; Windows 2000, 2K3, XP, Vista, and later Windows operating systems. CorzSpaZio will not run on Windows 9x.
LIVE MD5+SHA1 Multi-Hashes..
# made with checksum.. point-and-click hashing for windows. # from corz.org.. http://corz.org/windows/software/checksum/ # 48bca692098869417f00c0ed0d707a8e *CorzSpaZio.zip
A ßeta is also available..
LIVE MD5+SHA1 Multi-Hashes..
# made with checksum.. point-and-click hashing for windows. # from corz.org.. http://corz.org/windows/software/checksum/ # c8ddaac00caf1f81fb75c0afb7965be4 *CorzSpaZio 1.1b.zip b02d338bf3f043db92fadf7e5489662208398a35 *CorzSpaZio 1.1b.zip
First to comment!!
This is great software! I've been looking to replace my disk space monitor with something more simple for ages. This popped into google! It's simple and comprehensive at the same time. Love it!
The email worked first time too!
Thank you!
Wonderful! Congratulations on the award! Su
Award?
Another AutoIT success if I'm not wrong