Knowledgebase

In case a scan does not start as expected please check the following points:

1. Is the SpaceObServer scan service ("SpaceObServer Agent") started?
The SpaceObServer scan service ("SpaceObServer Agent") processes all scans of SpaceObServer. If this service is stopped or paused, no scan can be processed.

2. Do you use "Windows Authentication" for the database login?
If you use the "Windows Authentication" option ("Tools > Options > System > Database > Login info") and you configured the login of the SpaceObServer scan service to a dedicated user account, this user must have read and write access on the database. If it is not possible to give this user access rights to this database, please do use the "SQL Server Authentication" and a dedicated database user instead.

3. Does the "Observing Server" exist and is a SpaceObServer scan service running on this machine?
If the "Observing Server" ("Scan > Configure Scans > Expert Settings > Observing Server") is set (not blank) for a scan target, only this server will execute scans for this directory, no matter from which client the scan was triggered or scheduled. If for any reason (e.g. a rename of the server) this machine is not found or no SpaceObServer scan service is running on this machine, the scan will not be executed. You can leave the field blank to allow any available scan service to execute the scan.

4. Are there any error messages displayed in the "State" column of the "Configure Scans" dialog ("Scan > Configure Scans") for the scan?
If this is the case, please check whether any error messages or warnings of the source "SpaceObServer Agent" are listed in your Windows event log (Category "Application"). These entries could help us figure out the nature of the problem.

The space used by the database depends on the number of files, the number of folders and the change rate of your files. Generally the database needs approx. 35 MB per 100,000 files. This is just a rule of thumb and is only valid if the database has been compressed recently. When you enable the "MD5 checksums" for your scans, the database size will increase about 1.5 MB per 100,000 files.

On the first start of SpaceObServer you can configure the database connection used by SpaceObServer the storage of scan data. At "Tools > Options > System > Database" you can change the database connection.
If you want to use a SQL Server database to for data storage, your computer has to be connected to a server on which a MS SQL Server is available. Another possibility is that you have installed a MS SQL Server locally on your computer. In addition, you need a valid user account (username and password) for database access.

A free version of the MS SQL Server is available from Microsoft as SQL Server Express Edition. You can download this version free of charge from the internet or use the MS SQL Installer integrated in SpaceObServer at "Tools > Options > System > Database".

TreeSize Professional scans file system structures as needed and holds a snapshot of the scan in your system memory.
SpaceObServer archives all needed file system information in a backend database. This is needed to calculate size development information for the scanned directories and enables you to filter the file system tree without the need of a rescan.
Building up the SQL database is quite costly. This is why the initial scan of SpaceObServer runs very slow compared to the scans of TreeSize Professional.
Note: The update scans of SpaceObServer do only need to update the changes on your file system in the database. So generally the update scans run faster than the initial scans.

A migration of the SpaceObServer scans is described in the Database Migration chapter.

No, SpaceObServer does not change any time stamps of files or directories when scanning a file system branch. The scan engine works strictly read-only.

SpaceObServer does only access, read the file content if the MD5 checksum calculation is activated. However, in this case SpaceObServer uses a certain API to ensure the last access timestamp is not touched/modified.

The last access date of a file is maintained by Windows. Since Windows Vista/Server 2008, Microsoft disabled the automatic update for the "Last access" date by default to improve system performance on NTFS formatteddrives. Because of this, the date won't be updated anymore if a file content is changed for example. That is also the reason why the last access date isn't a good indicator anymore for recent usage of a file.

For more information, see the MSDN homepage.

The installation (upgrade) to the new version is straight forward and does not require an reboot of the server/machine you install the update on.

Yes, the Enterprise Edition of SpaceObServer offers you so-called "Post Scan Actions" with which you can easily and conveniently carry out automated reports after a scan of your scan target.

Detailed information can be found here.

Additionally, the Enterprise Edition offers an OLE automation interface to create automated reports using custom scripts. In the "Demos" subdirectory of the SpaceObServer installation folder you will find many useful example scripts which you can use as a basis for your own script.

To create weekly or monthly reports, you can use the Windows Task Scheduler to run your scripts at a certain time or time interval.

One license of SpaceObServer covers one installation. SpaceObServer can scan mutiple local, network and cloud paths. So, you can install SpaceObServer on one machine to observe multiple volumes. Because of the performance and the workload of this machine and the size and update intervals of the scanned paths it may be neceesary to have more than one instance running. If you are using SpaceObServer in a clustered environment, you need one license per node you install SpaceObServer on. For the correct usage of SpaceObServer on a clustered environment see this FAQ entry.

The performance of SpaceObServer is influenced most by these factors:

• Latency of the connection to the storage
• Performance of the SQL server
• The total number of file and folders
• Frequency of the scans (daily, weekly, monthly)