A hard disk event has caused me to lose the content of a great many files.
918 objects at last count, including files of several different types.
I make a nightly backup, and each week backup that backup to a cumulative weekly backup.
On the weekly backup are copies of the files before they were corrupted to a zero-byte size.
I will write some Word/VBA code to locate a copy of the file on my weekly backup, but first I need a full list of all the corrupted files.
In this example I define “corrupted” as “having a reported file size of zero bytes”. I have already loaded several such files and found that indeed they contain no visible data.
As I did for the audio play list exercise, I ask Everything to produce a list of all zero-length files (“size:0”).
The simple filter “size:0: returns both files AND folders, but I have no plans to deal with zero-length folders, only zero-length files.
Adding the file: filter reduces the results to include only files. “size:0 file:” does the trick for me.
Filter | Objects |
size:0 | 918 |
size:0 file: | 222 |
size:0 file: .LOG | 35 |
Note that my filter collected both “log” and “log2” extents.
Note that the filter is not case-sensitive (see “case:”)
Only three log-files were newer than six months. I check those three log-files and they are of no value to me.
Confidently I select all 35 log-files and delete them. That’s 35 anomalies out of the way.
I repeat my log-file search but looking for other major groups of size=0 files (dat, dmp, lock, txt)
After this quick exercise I am down to 79 zero-length files - out of an original set of 918 zero-length files.
I sort the list into Path sequence and after looking at the path and name of each file, decide that I will risk it and delete all the remaining zero-length files.
There is, therefore, no need for me to dash off and test then run a small VBA program.
Everything saves me time not just by its speed, but by saving me the time it takes to write logic to solve a problem.
Cheers, Chris