blog: how big is my file?

Post by **nikos** » 2007 Feb 11, 07:45

This is the comment area for today's blog entry found at:
http://www.zabkat.com/blog/11Feb07.htm

wasker · Post by **wasker** » 2007 Feb 13, 02:11

Waay too low-level even for geek like me. You lost me on "cluster size".

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 2007 Feb 13, 02:34

Would this help?
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/hard- ... /printable
(Clusters are explained at the end of that page)

wasker · Post by **wasker** » 2007 Feb 13, 02:46

Actually I know what is the cluster (at least I have an idea). It's just too techy for the blog, I guess.

Post by **nikos** » 2007 Feb 13, 07:37

think "minimum allocation size". You may want just 1 byte but the disk manager will give you a cluster, or 4096 bytes for NTFS. You need 5000 bytes? Two clusters for sir

anyway the point of the article was to hilight the high level attributes that affect file size, like ADS and compression attributes and how to manage them within xplorer2

jazzcat · Post by **jazzcat** » 2007 Feb 17, 15:43

since you mention it again, as well as emphasising that x2 "can tell you many things" about it, i will restate my opinion that the ADS functionality in x2 is lacking, in particular the most obvious feature:

'save ADS stream to file'

i raised this in another post (http://forum.zabkat.com/viewtopic.php?t=4703) and although you did point out a command line method (namely copy filename.exe:streamname outfile), you made the excuse that:

i bet 99% don't even have a clue what ADS is

perhaps now that people are learning from your blog, the time has come to make the feature set for x2 complete for all filesystem features, rather than relying on an excuse about numbers to justify imperfection...

Post by **nikos** » 2007 Feb 17, 18:28

so what's wrong with the command line method? Do you find yourself extracting streams often?

jazzcat · Post by **jazzcat** » 2007 Feb 18, 12:12

i do have to extract such files relatively often at work, as i work as a virus researcher. the rustok family of rootkits are fairly prevalent at the moment and the actual rootkit is held in an ADS stream, from which i much extract it before i can begin analysis, for example.

the command line method does work, but i can't help feel this question is just like saying 'well why use x2 at all? can you not manage your files completely from the command line?'

although this is extreme it illustrates the principle which is that there are often ways to perform many tasks that x2 performs, but that is not the point.

i have a great deal of respect for x2, and would like to use it for everything, not periodically switching to the command line whenever a feature is lacking...

i also feel that x2 is not so far from a full feature set regarding all filesystem features, and so from the perspective of completeness whenever i see an obvious feature that is missing i feel that it is a shame the feature is not implemented... so i try to appeal to your sense of perfectionism as the author of x2, since this ideal seems so close.