Directory Size Logger

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Hi,

I want to log certain directories’ size evolution. For example, I’d like to have a program grab “c:hello”‘s size every day at 7:00 pm and log it to a TXT file with proper date/time identification.

Any thoughts?

Thank you in advance

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Replies

Have a look at Karen’s Directory Printer. It is for personal use and inexpensive for business use.

Joe

--Joe

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Hi Joe,

Thanks for that. It looks pretty good, but it logs way more information than I actually need.
Even when I set it to only print minimal directory information and to ommit comments, it generates one line per subfolder and, if I ommit comments, it doesn’t record the logging date.

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If you would be prepared to schedule a BATch file, it is fairly simple!

@echo off
:: DIRSIZE - determine size of a directory

:: the directory path must be supplied as a parameter
::   preceded and followed by double quotes if there is a blank in the path
::   e.g.  C:windows    or   "C:Documents and SettingsAll Users"

if .%1==. echo %~n0: no directory name was supplied & pause & goto :eof
if not exist %1 echo %~n0: directory %1 does not exist & pause & goto :eof

echo %~n0: determining size of %1 ...
setlocal
:: generalised DATE and TIME routine for NT4/W2K/WXP and all Regional Settings
::   date variable %yy% has four digits, 20nn, and %mm%, %dd%, have two each
::   time variables %hr%, %mn%, %sc% and %th% each contain two digits
if "%date%A" LSS "A" (set toks=1-3) else (set toks=2-4)
for /f "skip=1 tokens=2-4 delims=(-)" %%a in ('echo.^|date') do (
   for /f "tokens=%toks% delims=.-/ " %%e in ('date /t')     do (
      for /f "tokens=5-8 delims=:., " %%i in ('echo.^|time') do (
        (set %%a=%%e) & (set %%b=%%f) & (set %%c=%%g) & rem create yy, mm, dd
        (set hr=%%i)  & (set mn=%%j)  & (set sc=%%k)  & (set th=%%l)
        rem  note the variable names for Time: hr, mn, sc, th
)))
if 1%yy% LSS 200 (set yy=20%yy%) & :: ensure 4-digit years in %yy%
if 1%hr% LSS 20  (set hr=0%hr%)  & :: ensure 2-digit hours in %hr%

:: do the DIR command for the directory name passed
::  and extract the size occupied by all the files
::  from the line   mmm File(s)  nnnnnnn  bytes
for /f "tokens=3" %%a in ('dir /-c %1 ^| find "File(s)"') do set dirsize=%%a

:: right-justify the byte value in a 15-character field (allowing up to 999 GB)
set dirsize=               %dirsize%
set dirsize=%dirsize:~-15%

:: write date, time, directory path, directory size
::   to the screen and to the log file .txt
echo %yy%/%mm%/%dd% %hr%:%mn%  %1 %dirsize%
echo %yy%/%mm%/%dd% %hr%:%mn%  %1 %dirsize% >> %~n0.txt
endlocal

Name it (say) DIRSIZE.BAT and the resulting log file will be named DIRSIZE.TXT.

Call it with the directory name/path
as DIRSIZE C:WINDOWS
or DIRSIZE “C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication Data” (if the path should contain a blank)

John

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Hi John,

Amazing! I didn’t expect you to type the code for me!
In fact I wouldn’t have been able to!

Your solution would be perfect, save for two things:
– for some reason it doesn’t log the folder size
– it logs the year incorrectly (but this is not a real problem, I can live with it).

I attach an example .txt file. JIC, the last entry’s date is in the yyyy-mm-dd format because by that time I’d realized how to change it and I feel more comfortable this way.

Below I copy the commands I used:

C:>dirsize.bat c:archivosalfabeta
DIRSIZE: determining size of c:archivosalfabeta …
20/03/22 11:21 c:archivosalfabeta

C:>dirsize.bat c:archivosalfabeta
DIRSIZE: determining size of c:archivosalfabeta …
20/03/22 11:24 c:archivosalfabeta

C:>dirsize.bat c:archivosalfabeta
DIRSIZE: determining size of c:archivosalfabeta …
20-03-22 11:25 c:archivosalfabeta

Any ideas why’d this happen?

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Hi Diego,
One question: do you want the details put in a new file or appended to a file each time the code runs?
The basic code in VBScript to get size and time is fairly easy:

    Dim fso, fdrSelected
    Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    Set fdrSelected = fso.GetFolder(wscript.arguments(0))
    msgbox Now & " : " & fdrSelected.Size

but the finer points depend on what you want to do with the ouput i.e. do you want it added to a log file or to create a new file each time?

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Hi rory,

I’d like to append the output to a log file just like John’s code does. See the attached in this post for an example log file (it would log the file size as well).

Thanks

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OK then, a script like this should do:

Dim strLogFilePath
strLogFilePath = "C:TestLogFile.txt"
Dim fso, fdrSelected, tsmFileText
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set fdrSelected = fso.GetFolder(wscript.arguments(0))
Set tsmFileText = fso.OpenTextFile(strLogFilePath, 8, True)
tsmFileText.WriteLine Now & " : " & fdrSelected.Size
tsmFileText.Close
Set tsmFileText = Nothing
Set fso = Nothing

You can save it as, say, ListDirSize.vbs and then call it using ListDirSize C:FolderPath
You can change the path to the log file as necessary.

HTH

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It worked! Thanks!!

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Ah – I had forgotten that you probably have a non-English version!

Could you go to a command prompt and type
DATE
and tell me what results, and
DIR
and tell me what results.

I am assuming that the DIR command gives as the second last line:
mmm File(s) nnnnnnn bytes
and am searching in the BATch file for the word “File(s)” to get the directory size from that line.

Thanks

John

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You are right. Here go the results:

– For the Date Command:
C:Documents and SettingsPeru-014>date
La fecha actual es: 23/03/2006
Escriba la nueva fecha: (dd-mm-aa)

– For the DIR command
18 dirs 7.135.051.776 bytes libres

Thanks!

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Diegol

OK, your date command gives preceding words I have never encountered!

Final requests are to do, in a Command Prompt window:
ECHO %date%
ECHO %time%
(preferably before 10:00 in the morning!), and I should be able to simplify the timestamp code significantly.

For the DIR command, the line you have given me is the final line, which says how full the disk is, not the preceding line, which says how many files and how many bytes are in the specified directory!

Thanks

John

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Your batch and VB scripts somehow inspired me. I recalled this little app called AutoIt and gave it a try.

This script lets me output several directories’ sizes to a matrix. The idea is to output to the CSV format so I can program the script to run, say, daily, and after some time (a couple months for example) open in Excel to analyze the data.

Here’s the code:
Note: I enclose the code in dashes because I’m having problems to use the supported Script font – not the first time!

———————————————————————————————————————————————-
#include
#include

$File = “SizeLogger.csv”

; FileExists returns 1 if file exists, 0 otherwise
$Exists = FileExists($File)
$Date = @mday & “/” & @mon & “/” & @year
$Time = @hour & “:” & @min

if $Exists = 1 then
; FileOpen returns a file handle if it succeeds, -1 otherwise
$File= FileOpen ( $File, 1)
if $File -1 then
FileWriteLine ($File, $Date & “;” & $Time & “;” & dirgetsize(“Dir 1”) & “;” & dirgetsize(“Dir 2”) & “;” & dirgetsize(“Dir 3”))
Else
Msgbox(0, “Error”, “Could not open the specified file.”)
Endif
Else
_FileCreate($File)
FileWriteLine ($File, “Date” & “;” & “Time” & “;” & “Dir 1” & “;” & “Dir 2” & “;” & “Dir 3” )
FileWriteLine ($File, $Date & “;” & $Time & “;” & dirgetsize(“Dir 1”) & “;” & dirgetsize(“Dir 2”) & “;” & dirgetsize(“Dir 3”))
Endif
———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Replace Dir 1, Dir 2 and Dir 3 for directory paths of your choice and you can add more in a similar fashion (up to 256 columns if it’s to be viewed with Excel).
For the code to work, you’d have to save it to a plain file with AU3 extension, download Autoit and either install it (you can then run the AU3 file) or use the standalone compiler to generate an EXE file.

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The Script font is not meant for VBA or VBScript code – it is a handwriting font! It makes code virtually unreadable.
You can put

Code:

 and 

tags around code if you want a non-proportional font, or

 and 

tags if you want a non-proportional font and you want to preserve indentation etc.

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Thanks Hans.

I see the

 and 

tags in the Markup Tags pop-up, but where would I have picked the

Code:

 and 

tags from? I wouldn’t have noticed them if you hadn’t told me. I couldn’t find them in the Help link either.

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The

Code:

 and 

tags are relatively new additions that haven’t been included in the 1-Click TagPanel and help yet

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No problem. Glad to see some new things going on .

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If your going to use

Code:

 and 

tags for your code, then you will also need to include [tab] tags to indent lines. Easiest way is to paste the vba code into a word document and replace every instance of 4 spaces with [tab].

StuartR

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Thanks for the tip, I’ll keep it in mind!

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There’s a reseource kit utility called “DIRUSE” http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techi…ng/diruse-o.asp%5B/url%5D that will output this. (You would have to look up the switches to get it to just print the totals. Then you could write a batch file that outputs to a file (e.g. “>> c:data.t”) and just run that from the scheduler.

That’s off the top of my head, though.

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Thanks, Jim.

I like rory’s script best for the way it logs data. But Diruse looks like a promising app too (it has a number of parameters that may prove useful).

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