Folder date showing latest date of all subfolders and files?

[BigJim]

I manage an environment where all of a folder tree is archived/burned to CDs if any of the files within the tree haven't been touched during the last 6 months. Most trees consist of more data than can fit on a single CD, so I have to decide how to divide up the trees to fit on multiple CDs.

I'd like to find/develop a way of listing all folders in a tree showing:

1. The date of the file most recently touched anywhere in the tree
2. The cumulative size of all files within the tree

This method of archiving (rather than other, more sophisticated ones) is used so that our users can take archive CDs with them into the field to possibly restore needed files to their laptops (when out of connectivity with corporate's servers/utilities) without having to have the sophicticated restore utilities on their laptops.

Can the, or a combination of the, IDM utilities assist in this solution?

[Mofi]

You could use Windows command dir (enter dir /? in a command promp to get help) with appropriate parameters and redirect its output into a text file. This file could be analyzed with a script which reformats it to get the infos you need in the format you like. This would be the perfect solution but needs some programming skills. This solution could really create a text file which tells you how to burn the CDs or even better creates a batch file which copies all files with correct tree to "Image_CDx" temp directories ready for burning. This would be the ultimate solution highly automated.

You could also use UltraCompare to get the list of files sorted by date. A recursive folder compare with the parent directories (currently only one parent directory is enough, but hopefully not possible anymore in future) and printing them to a text file for further analyzes by an UltraEdit script would be also possible.

Or you use UltraCompare to get the list of files recursively sorted by date. You have to compare the current tree with the last burned tree. You could then look on the date and decide if it is necessary to copy the whole tree and burn it or not. But at the moment I have no idea if you could anywhere see how many bytes the files in the selected tree currently needs in total.

A manual quick solution without the need of programming skills would be to use my favorite file manager Total Commander. It is a 2 window pane file manager. You could open in both window panes the same parent directory. Then you switch for example in the left window to branch view mode (with Ctrl+B) where you see all files from all directories of the current parent directory without the paths. In this mode sort the list of files by date and you have the information you need to make your decision. On the right pane you can now select the directories and Total Commander would count the number of bytes of the files in the directories currently selected. Maybe you have to enable this count feature first (only once). I have it enabled for a long time and cannot remember if counting the total number of bytes of a directory tree is enabled by default.