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. 45 - 55 MB per 100,000 files. This is just a rule of thumb and is only valid if the database has been compressed recently.

Note: This does not apply to Azure SQL or SQL Server cluster instances. In these cases, the query log cannot be disabled, which means that significantly higher storage space consumption is to be expected.

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.

To increase the scan performance of SpaceObServer, please consider the following:

1. Use a well-performing database server, with an up-to-date CPU. Most commonly the database is the bottleneck of the scan performance. Please check if the machine on that the database server is running has a high CPU load. If so, consider transferring it to a different machine. Furthermore, a database server will greatly benefit from additional free RAM, so extending the RAM usually increases the performance of the database server. See also our recommendations for the database infrastructure.

2. If you are scanning network shares, another reason for a slow scan can be a slow network connection to the target machine. Local scans run faster than network scans. So, if it is possible we recommend installing SpaceObServer directly on the file server and accessing the scanned information with SpaceObServer Client Access or the SpaceObServer WebAccess. However, if you prefer network scans, we do not recommend scanning more than 3-5 machines with one instance of SpaceObServer, but this depends totally on the number of files and folders on the servers as well as depending on the update rate of the files and folders on the servers.

3. The scan options "Calculate Permissions (ACLs) and store in database" and "Track NTFS Alternate Data Streams and NTFS Hard Links" will also decrease the scan speed, if activated. These options can be toggled in the Configure Scans dialog.

4. By default, the Scan Service options are configured to ensure good performance for typical scenarios. However, in specific cases these settings can be adjusted within the Options dialog. For instance, when performing network scans involving high latency, it is beneficial to increase both the maximum number of threads and the process priority. Conversely, in situations involving very heavy database load, you should consider reducing the number of concurrent scans.

5. The more entries in the database tables, the slower the scans. This is why multiple scans are split to multiple database tables. In addition, you could split larger scans (>10 mio files) into multiple scans of sub directory trees ("\\Server1\share1\", "\\Server1\share2\", ...). This would result in smaller tables and faster scans.

6. Errors during the scan (database timeouts, missing access permissions etc.) can also cause slow scans. Such errors are logged in your Windows Event Log (Category "Application") of the source "SpaceObServer Agent" and can be viewed there.

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.

Basically, the user account configured for scanning the scan target (configurable at "Scan > Configure Scans > Expert Settings") requires the permission to list the folders contents and to read the attributes.
On a share additionally read access on the share is necessary.

If you want SpaceObServer to also collect the NTFS permissions ("Scan > Configure Scans > Scan Options"), the permission to read the ACL is needed.

If you want SpaceObServer to also calculate MD5 hashes for the duplicate file search ("Scan > Configure Scans > Scan Options"), the read access for the file content is needed.

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 formatted drives. 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 a reboot of the server/machine you install the update on.