XTree Gold – remember?

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Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere but I couldn’t find it. Does anyone have experience of an update version of something akin to Xtree that gave a simple clear visual comparison of of 2 directories in a split screen, and could easily sync the two? Many thanks

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Ah! Memories….

cheers, Paul

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I was an XTree Gold user and it pretty much set the bar for what I expect a file manager to do. I migrated to xplorer2 by zabkat.com and have yet to be disappointed. I have never stopped learning new things that I can do with it, and their userguide says that you can sync two directories. I use their split screen as a routine view. I think you’ll like it.

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It looks like you have to pay for xplorer2.

Have a look at Unreal Commander. It’s free and has a dual pane interface (and more). I haven’t used it personally but it came second in a review of the 5 top free file managers where you can read the pros and cons. (The number 1 pick didn’t offer dual panes.)

Hope this helps…

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Have a look at Unreal Commander. It’s free and has a dual pane interface (and more). I haven’t used it personally but it came second in a review of the 5 top free file managers where you can read the pros and cons. (The number 1 pick didn’t offer dual panes.)

I have to strongly disagree about the “number 1 pick” FreeCommander XE. I use it every day in side-by-side dual pane configuration, using a tree display per panel. It also has a great folder sync function which is almost as good as Free File Sync (Sourceforge). I can highlight a folder in each tree (pane) and use the compare folder function with one click. It works great across the network to sync multiple computers or a Network Attached Storage device.

There are a lot of options in FreeCommander XE that allow you to configure it to most any personal preference. Don’t sell it short. Try it for a week and play with all the options and toolbar configurations. I am sure it will fit your needs.

BTW: I am a beta tester and I primarily use the 64-bit version which has not been released to the public as yet.

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Check this out:

http://www.winnc.com/

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ZTree is the successor to XTree. For your deja vu moment of the day, take a look at ztree.com. (It’s not free, but ISTR XTree wasn’t free, either.)

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Thanks for all replies, much appreciated

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@JC Zorkoff – The screenshot in Gizmo’s review didn’t show that FreeCommander XE allows a dual pane view but you’re right, it does allow this.

I downloaded the portable version of FreeCommander XE (v2014.1.0.650) and played with it for a while. Unfortunately my (admittedly very short) experience with it was that it hung frequently with ‘Not responding’ showing in the title bar when used with a local folder in one pane and a remote folder (i.e. one on another network attached PC) in the other pane, taking almost a minute to do a simple move of a single file less than 1k in size between the two.
36379-freecommander
Click picture to enlarge.

I also found that it would only show remote executables with a generic icon, not the program’s icon itself. This may be minor but was a little disconcerting.
36380-freecommander1
Click picture to enlarge.

It sounds like your experience has been more positive, so I’m pleased for you.

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I downloaded the portable version of FreeCommander XE (v2014.1.0.650) and played with it for a while. Unfortunately my (admittedly very short) experience with it was that it hung frequently with ‘Not responding’ showing in the title bar when used with a local folder in one pane and a remote folder (i.e. one on another network attached PC) in the other pane, taking almost a minute to do a simple move of a single file less than 1k in size between the two.

I also found that it would only show remote executables with a generic icon, not the program’s icon itself. This may be minor but was a little disconcerting.

On point #1 – I have also seen the “(not responding)” message in the title bar, but for me the cause was a delay in the network, not a problem with FreeCommander XE. I have never seen the message during a 1k file transfer from a local drive in one pane to a network drive in the other pane. A 50 MB transfer as described takes about 1 second on my system.

On point #2 – The icon display is configurable in the options. I have mine configured to use extracted icons for network access as seen in the screenshot below (this is the same version 650 that you tested). Notice that the icons for KeePass.exe and KeePass.ico are extracted from across the network.

36384-FCXE-650-folder

This is a program with many options as I mentioned earlier. Please use it for a while and try as many as possible.

You will notice in the screen capture above that I have set different colors for the Tree Display and the File display. Also, I configure the program to display executables in a different color than data files.

I can configure FreeCommander to use different editors to display different file types (.txt, .doc, .xml, etc).

I can configure which program to use for file comparison (I use WinMerge) and it can be used to compare 2 highlighted files in each pane using the toolbar icon and is also available from the context menu in the folder sync function after comparing 2 folders.

I have tried Explorer++, QDir, Total Commander, Xplorer2, Double Commander, Multi Commander and Explorer Plus. None of them come close to the capabilities of FreeCommander XE.

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I think xplorer2_lite is what you are after. The ‘lite’ version is 32-bit but works on 64 all right, and for thirty bucks you can get a version with all the bells and whistles. The lite version is sufficient for my purposes, but if I recall, the full version is ‘single user’, which makes it attractive to those of us with a number of computers. I realize this was covered above, but that link will take you to the page where both the lite and paid versions are compared. It has a lot of features, so it’s better to start with the lite even if you want to upgrade later.

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The current commercial product that is a successor to Central Point PC Tools (who acquired the XTree Company), through Symantec Norton Navigator 95 (who had acquired Central Point), is Avanquest PowerDesk Pro.

I have personally had and use(d) all three: Central Point PCTools, Symantec Norton Navigator 95, and Avanquest PowerDesk Pro 9. I have also tried Free Commander and I do use xplorer2_lite on secondary computers, but I prefer the commercial stuff, possibly because I had its (expensive) predecessors.

PowerDesk is worth a look or a trial if anyone is serious about this: I like it, and the only qualification I can make is that you should realize that the reason it gives lightning-fast results to searches is that it spends resources cataloguing (which can be turned off).

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Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere but I couldn’t find it. Does anyone have experience of an update version of something akin to Xtree that gave a simple clear visual comparison of of 2 directories in a split screen, and could easily sync the two? Many thanks

For something akin to XTreeGold, I concur with dg1261. Try ZTree (ZTreeWin).

This is not only a perfect successor to XTreeGold, but in my opinion the most powerful file manager available for Windows. Among its many new features you’ll find the split-screen sync ability is much improved over XTree.

For those not familiar with XTree, this is a console-mode program, so it’s not GUI, and at first may appear to be very DOS-like. But don’t be fooled. It’s absolutely amazing what this program can do.

There is however a learning curve, so you must be prepared to spend some time studying it to appreciate its power. It is in my opinion best suited for those with technical interests and a preference for using single-key commands rather than the mouse (although the mouse is supported).

The feature list is massive, and it is actively updated and supported by the author, Kim Henkel.

The download includes both 32 and 64-bit versions, with a 31-day free trial. After that the price is $30.

– John G.

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All this talk about file managers and sync tools and now DOS has my head spinning. I was madly trying to remember a certain DOS utility and to my astonishment, I remembered it. Hands up all those who remember (and presumably used, as I did) DIRMATCH? My having had to practically memorize both volumes of The MS-DOS Bible left me with something, but this wasn’t a DOS command as such but one of a collection of free utilities that did the rounds at the time.

For anyone who is running the trial of the product I suggested, I discovered one feature this weekend that has been keeping me busy ever since. (This is new to the latest version but which I didn’t know existed, with my not having read the ‘new features’, which for me is now a lesson learned.) This feature is called Disk Space Saver, and it will search a drive or folder for duplicates, large files, and so forth, and thereby let you dedupe by several criteria. In my case applied to several large external hard drives with chaotic directory trees and a lot of old ‘saved’ non-data files, as well as data files. I gained a lot of free space, which I am now defragging.

That was PowerDesk Pro, as posted earlier, and I do suggest a trial (which would give you enough time to accomplish what I did whether you decide to buy or not). I have also run across a free utility that works well with getting an overall picture of what occupies the space on a drive or folder, in case readers of this thread are interested, and that is Folder Size 3.0.0.0, which is a terrific asset.

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I used to use PowerDesk but I had to switch to another file manager.

I purchased PowerDesk Utilities 98 (version 3) from Mijenix in about 1999. At that time I thought it was great. I especially liked the builtin support for ZIP files; they were treated like a folder and I could drag-and-drop files to and from the Zip folder.

Some years later PowerDesk was acquired by Avanquest and in 2007 I purchased the upgrade to PowerDesk Pro 6 ($39.95 retail). This version also worked great until I upgraded my computer to Windows 7 64-bit. I immediately noticed that PDP-6 would not handle the file context menus for 64-bit applications (e.g. AxCrypt file encryption).

So I went back to Avanquest in Dec 2010 and purchased PowerDesk Pro 8 which they claimed supported Windows 7 (x32 and x64). However, it still did not support the 64-bit context menus. Also, it’s performance had gone downhill. It took an exceptionally long time to list a folder with lots of files (e.g. C:Windowssystem32). The poor performance was the primary issue of complaint on Avanquest’s PowerDesk forum back in 2010 and into 2011.

Customer support told me after some long discussions that the 64-bit context menu problem was “a known issue” and would not be fixed until release 9 at the earliest.

So I demanded a refund of my last purchase and have not gone back.

Avanquest is currently selling PowerDesk Pro 9 ($39.95 retail) and the features listed on their Web Site are about the same as for version 8, but I am not going to buy it to see if they have fixed the problems.

I am currently using FreeCommander XE (as mentioned in previous posts) because it has all the features I liked in PowerDesk Pro 6 and much more. It has builtin 64-bit context menu support and it opens large folders very fast (re-sorting is fast as well).

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I used to use PowerDesk but I had to switch to another file manager.

Customer support told me after some long discussions that the 64-bit context menu problem was “a known issue” and would not be fixed until release 9 at the earliest.

So I demanded a refund of my last purchase and have not gone back.

Avanquest is currently selling PowerDesk Pro 9 ($39.95 retail) and the features listed on their Web Site are about the same as for version 8, but I am not going to buy it to see if they have fixed the problems.

I am currently using FreeCommander XE (as mentioned in previous posts) because it has all the features I liked in PowerDesk Pro 6 and much more. It has builtin 64-bit context menu support and it opens large folders very fast (re-sorting is fast as well).

I do not have a vested interest in Avanquest, and I have not followed their forum nor am I certain of the specific problem you cite (my use is on 64-bit Win 7).

I do have two suggestions, and one is to give the trial a shot to see if it has or hasn’t changed (and let us know, if you have a moment), and the other is that if it appears to have improved, to be sure you are on their mailing-list, since upgrades are occasionally offered at a very low price ($14).

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I had some friends who used XTree Gold and liked it. Back when I was using DOS, my file manager of choice was a shareware product called Stereo Shell. By default, it always showed two panes and tasks like copying, moving, and deleting files were very easy. You could also work with compressed files and run programs from it. Alas, Windows ended development and support for it

Windows 3.1 File Manager could be set up with dual panes. Once Windows 95 came out, the dual-pane feature disappeared.

Now I use Power Desk Pro and Free Commander. Free Commander picked up the Norton Commander F-keys which are very handy.

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One file manager that we did not cover but that may be of great interest is XYplorer (not to be confused with Xplorer2, which is an entirely different product). In that respect we should probably have discussed GoodSync[/COLOR] as well, which is another commercial product for syncing. That, in turn, is competing with LapLink[/COLOR] so far as its present home page spiel is concerned.

XYplorer is worth a look because it is available as a free version, which is limited but still remarkably extensive, or as the full version. The latest XYplorer Full version was posted for download today, March 31, and the corresponding Free version could come ‘at any time’ (including today). One convenient feature is that the program can be installed on a USB stick or other portable device.

The price for the Full version is $30 per user (i.e. as many machines as you want), and $90 for a lifetime licence. You can have a 30-day trial of the Full version, which might be worthwhile in itself – it really does seem to have lot of features.

It appears to have good support, and there are, for example, such topics as How to integrate TeraCopy in XYplorer[/COLOR]from various internet sources. TeraCopy, for those who are not familiar with it, is a free file-transfer accelerator (which I use and recommend).

Edited to add: XYplorerFree 13.90.0100 was released 08-Apr-2014 (i.e. the hoped-for latest free version mentioned above).

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