DiskBoss Ultimate includes a built-in disk change monitor capable of detecting file creations, modifications, attribute changes and deletions in real-time. The real-time disk monitor provides the user with the ability to monitor one or more disks, directories or network shares, detect all changes made in the monitored file systems and optionally export reports, send notifications and/or execute custom actions.

The disk change monitor is capable of detecting file creations, modifications, deletes, attribute changes, etc. In order to customize the list of monitored file system events, open the monitor operation dialog, select the 'General' tab and select the file system change events that should be monitored. In addition, the user is provided with the ability to enable/disable monitoring of subdirectories. If the disk change monitor is configured to detect changes in subdirectories, the list of detected file system changes will include all changes starting from the monitored disks and directories and ending in the deepest subdirectories in the monitored file system.

The disk change monitor allows one to categorize and filter detected file system changes by the change type, file type, extension, file size, user name, etc. Use the categories combo box located on the left side of the categories control bar to select an appropriate change categorization mode. In order to filter changes using one or more change filters, select the required change filters, press the right mouse button and select the 'Apply Selected Filters' menu item. The disk change monitor will update the change list and show file system changes matching the selected change filters.

The disk change monitoring dialog allows one to customize the change list and in addition to the standard columns display the size and owner of created and changed files. In order to customize the change view, press the 'View' button located on the dialog's toolbar and select additional columns that should be displayed. The file size and the owner may be displayed for changed and modified files, but not for deleted files because file system notifications about deleted files are issued by the operating system after a file was actually deleted and there is no way receive this information about not existing files.

The DiskBoss' disk change monitor allows one to export HTML, XML, text and Excel CSV reports. In order to export a report file press the 'Save' button located on the disk monitor results dialog, enter a report title, select an appropriate report format, enter the maximum number of changes to export, enter the report file name and press the 'Save' button.

A typical report file includes a summary table showing the report date and time, the total number of file system changes that were detected, the number of changes exported to the report, the change rate, the process time and the status of the change filter. The change categories table shows up to 10 top change categories according to the change categorization mode selected in the disk monitor results dialog. If one or more change filters were selected in the disk monitor results dialog, the selected filters will be highlighted in the categories table and the change list will show changes matching the selected change filters. The change list displays the detected file system changes. For each change in the list, DiskBoss shows the date and time of the change, the change type and the name of the changed file or directory including the full path.

The disk change monitor allows one to send e-mail notifications, save reports and/or execute custom actions or user-defined file management commands when a disk change monitoring command reaches a user-specified number of changes. The ability to execute user-defined file management commands as actions in the disk change monitor enables highly powerful and flexible integrations between different types of operations. For example, a user-defined file synchronization command automatically triggered after each X changes in a disk or directory provides real-time file synchronization capabilities.

The DiskBoss' disk change monitor provides IT administrators with the ability to submit disk change monitoring reports from multiple servers and desktop computers to a centralized SQL database allowing one to keep critical files and directories under a strict supervision. In order to submit a disk change monitoring report into an SQL database, press the 'Save' button located on the disk monitor results dialog, select the 'SQL Database' report format and press the 'Save' button.

Active production systems may have a very high rate of changing files resulting in very long disk change monitoring reports significantly complicating identification of critical file system changes and resulting in additional overhead on running, production systems. In order to minimize the amount of unimportant file system changes in disk change monitoring reports, open the disk monitor operation dialog and add one or more file matching rules specifying files that should be monitored. During runtime, the disk change monitor will evaluate detected file system changes and just skip all files not matching the specified rules.

Power computer users and IT administrators are provided with the ability to send E-Mail notifications, save reports, execute user-defined file management commands and/or execute custom commands when a disk change monitoring operation reaches a user-specified number of changes. In order to enable E-Mail notifications, open the disk monitor operation dialog, specify the number of changes that should trigger the E-Mail notifications and specify an e-mail address to send notifications to. Before enabling E-Mail notifications, the user needs to open the options dialog, select the 'E-Mail' tab and specify the SMTP server name, the user name and password to use to send notifications.

One of the most powerful capabilities of DiskBoss is the ability to trigger custom file management operations after a user-specified number of file system changes is detected in one or more disks or directories. This capability may be very effectively used to trigger file synchronization and rule-based file organizing operations on actively used disks and directories automatically keeping files synchronized and/or organized. In order to trigger a file synchronization or file organizing command from the disk change monitor, create a new disk change monitoring operation, open the operation dialog, select the 'Actions' tab, enable disk change monitoring actions, specify the number of file system changes that should trigger the command and select a user-defined file management command to be executed.

DiskBoss provides the user with the ability to pre-configure custom disk change monitoring operations as user-defined commands and execute such commands in a single mouse click using the DiskBoss GUI application or direct desktop shortcuts. User-defined commands may be managed and executed through the commands dialog or the commands tool pane. In order to add a new command through the commands pane, press the right mouse button over the pane and select the 'Add New - Disk Change Monitoring Command' menu item. In order to execute a previously saved command, just click on the command item in the commands tool pane or create a direct desktop shortcut on the desktop.

Monitoring Disks Using DiskBoss Command Line Utility

In addition to the DiskBoss GUI application, DiskBoss Ultimate and DiskBoss Server provide a command line utility allowing one to monitor one or more disks or directories from batch files and shell scripts. The DiskBoss command line utility is located in the '<ProductDir>/bin' directory.

diskboss -monitor -dir <Directory 1> [ ... <Directory X> <Options> ]

This command monitors the specified disks or directories and displays detected file system changes on the standard output. In addition, the user is provided with the ability to export detected file system changes to HTML, XML, text, Excel CSV, PDF and XML reports.

diskboss -execute <User-Defined Disk Monitoring Command>

This command executes a user-defined disk change monitoring command pre-configured using the DiskBoss GUI application or imported from an XML file.

Options:

-exclude_dir <Exclude Directory 1> [ ... <Exclude Directory X> ]

This option specifies the list of directories that should be excluded from the disk change monitoring operation. In order to ensure proper parsing of command line arguments, directories containing space characters should be double quoted.

-save_html_report [ Report File Name ]

This option saves disk change monitoring results to an HTML report file. If no file name is specified, DiskBoss will automatically generate a file name according to the following template: diskboss_[date]_[time].html and save a report file in the user's home directory.

-save_csv_report [ Report File Name ]

This option saves disk change monitoring results to an Excel CSV file. If no file name is specified, DiskBoss will automatically generate a file name according to the following template: diskboss_[date]_[time].csv and save a report file in the user's home directory.

-save_text_report [ Report File Name ]

This option saves disk change monitoring results to a text report file. If no file name is specified, DiskBoss will automatically generate a file name according to the following template: diskboss_[date]_[time].txt and save a report file in the user's home directory.

-save_pdf_report [ Report File Name ]

This option saves disk change monitoring results to a PDF report file. If no file name is specified, DiskBoss will automatically generate a file name according to the following template: diskboss_[date]_[time].pdf and save a report file in the user's home directory.

-save_xml_report [ Report File Name ]

This option saves disk change monitoring results to an XML report file. If no file name is specified, DiskBoss will automatically generate a file name according to the following template: diskboss_[date]_[time].xml and save a report file in the user's home directory.

-save_report [ Report File Name ]

This option saves disk change monitoring results to a native DiskBoss report file, which may be later loaded in the DiskBoss GUI application for future review and analysis. If no file name is specified, DiskBoss will automatically generate a file name according to the following template: diskboss_[date]_[time].flr

-save_to_database

This option saves disk change monitoring results to an SQL Database using the ODBC interface configured in the DiskBoss GUI application options dialog.

-title <Report Title>

This option sets a custom report title.

-label <Report Label>

This option sets a custom report label.

-compress

This option instructs to save compressed report files.

-v

This option shows the product's major and minor versions.

-help

This option shows the command line usage information.