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WinQuota 3.0 - disk quota management software
Key features (full list)
limit the maximal size of each file or directory
set up different limit values for different users
set up different limit values for different groups
serve any existing user or group credentials from domains
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  • WinQuota 2.5 user guide

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    Table of contents


    Understanding Quota Management

    Any type of subject can be specified, including local or domain users and groups. Typical settings are shown below:

    All quota changes will be verified every time user performs any file operation. If no settings were applied for the user, the primary group will be inspected. If no limits found, all group limitations will be checked for all groups, containing user credentials that are currently operated. And if none of these settings are found, 'anyone' credential will be used to check quota limitations.

    Settings displayed above will be applied to all files and sub-directories recursively in C:\QTEST directory. All other subjects which are not gained into administrators, power users or guests, will have only "Anyone" limitations (for example, there are Domain Admins).

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    Operating with WinQuota Control Panel

    WinQuota Control Panel is a new way to manage your quota settings; it provides consolidated way to maintain all common and usual operations, beginning with adding new limits and notifications, managing existing limits, checking quota settings, and more. This way works with close integration with other parts of WinQuota, such as shell extensions.


    Control Panel overview

    The control panel provides way to manage all known limits were applied for all drives, in one consolidated list as the following image displays:

    At this picture:

    • left column indicates which subject is being evolved for quota limits,
    • three next columns indicate hard limits, soft limits, and space being allocated. Note: if such folder were splitted between many subjects, every subject will be counted individually,
    • usage in percents for every limit,
    • the folder where limits were specified,
    • every background indicates different states, like quota not used (as image displays), possible errors (different kinds of red depending of severity), and state "many free place" as green color scale.

    All operations are available through menus.


    Importing existing quota settings

    The first step to use WinQuota Control Panel 2.5 is importing all settings were made by previous versions (if exists). WinQuota Control Panel enumerates all available drives with progress indication; the scanning process can be stopped by any time as the following picture displays:

    At this picture you seeing scanning process of your drives, with actual settings have been found. You don't need to enforce scanning process often; all further modifications will be cached automatically.

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    Adding new quota limit

    As WinQuota Control Panel operates with all quota settings from central place, you need to specify a root folder to be limited with quotas.

    As the folder is chosen, you need to specify credentials to be played. Credential choosing dialog allows enumerating of all users in the system, including local users and groups, domain users and groups (in case computer is involved into corporal network). WinQuota works with domain structure from NT4WS to Win2K3, including Active Directory support. This dialog supports asynchronous data retrieval mechanisms, and representation of users, domains and groups as shown below:

    And the final step is specifying values for hard and soft limits. The suffixes “K”, “M”, and “G” are applicable to indicates
    kilo-, mega-, or gigabytes appropriately. Quota settings dialog provides basic facilities to change quota settings:

    This dialog shows the initial path related to quota checks being modified, user, credentials belong to, and current settings to be applied.

    Note: The changes are deferred until they are applied by menu point “apply changes”.

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    Managing users and groups

    Since WinQuota 2.5.4, the new improvements and significant changes are available for specifying users and groups. These changes are relevant to large and even huge domains and Active Directory forests.

    Here you can do the following actions:

    • Browse your domain structure and a find user in the list (as you did in previous versions). For this case you can specify the sub-domain name like "SUBDOMAIN", "sub.domain.com", or specify the domain controller server exactly, like the screenshot does. In case your typing server name, leading backslashes are mandatory.

      This way is useful if you don't need to see all users; you have an exact knowledge which domain you are planning to act.

      With this feature you are able to specify not the primary controller, but the backup controller too; in case you have not equal lines to PDC and BDC it may consume less time to see all the users and groups you need.
    • The 2nd way is based upon exact knowledge of user; so you can type it at the bottom of the dialog like 'ENH\testqa'. No full scan of the domain structure will be performed; only the name you typed will be used.

      This way is useful if you know exactly all users and groups needed to be accounted, and keeps your time. In case unknown user will be typed, you'll be informed about it and you'll have chances to fix it.

      In case you don't need to specify user and group, and you need to set quota limits to all users, you can type here "Anyone"; it is also possible.

    Since WinQuota 2.5.4, you are able to apply the same limits to all group members sequentially, by checking the appropriate checkbox below:

    This checkbox is enabled only if you selected a particular group, and this group contains at least one member. By selecting empty groups you'll see checkbox disabled.

    Here you can do the following actions, in case checkbox is enabled:

    • Keep checkbox unchecked. In this case only group based limit will be added, with the semantics that all users in that group cannot overflow hard limit you typed, without any dependency how much space were eaten by each user. This limit will be applicable for all group members in run time; removing user from this group will indicate that this group limit will be affected immediately. By the same manner, in case of adding a new user to this group the appropriate quota limits will be played immediately.

    • By turning on that option, you'll get the same group limit as the discussed above, plus all members of this group will have that limit separately. Unlike group limits, any changes in group members will not reflect on users that were repeated by that option. Anyway, by removing or adding such user to the group you'll specify later, the limits will not be added or removed automatically. By adding a new member to the group you'll need to add the user limit manually.

      As was noted, the group limits also were applied together with all group members; so possibly you'll need to remove group limits or expand all group limits. If you keep group limit intact, all the users will not use space more than that group limit describes simultaneously.

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    Editing quota settings

    By using menus or just by double click, you can change existing quota limits easily. As the quota limit is pair (directory, credential), you should need to add/remove existing quotas if you want to change credentials. The following dialog to manage limits should be used:

    This dialog shows the initial path related to quota checks being modified, user, credentials belong to, and current settings to be applied. The suffixes “K”, “M”, and “G” are applicable to indicates kilo-, mega-, or gigabytes appropriately.

    Note: The changes are deferred until they are applied by menu point “apply changes”.


    Removing quota settings

    To remove existing quota, you need to use the appropriate menu point. The group removals are applicable.

    Note: If no elements have been selected, no elements will be removed.

    Note: This operation will not cause any confirmations!

    Note: The changes are deferred until they are be applied by menu point “apply changes”.


    Applying quota settings

    There is separate menu point to apply all the changes you make. No quota limits are updated until they are applied manually. The operations may lead your data typed to be lost, you'll see confirmations like:

    and you'll be able to confirm changes or just loose them.

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    Checking and repairing quota settings

    Since version 2.5, WinQuota Control Panel provides embedded way to check and repair possible problems with quota counters (they may appear if some maintenance was provided in safe mode, for example).

    The picture above demonstrates typical view if checks were provided. By options “Repair” and “Display warnings and recommendations” you can not only check (and repair) quota limits, but also see lost credential SIDs, and possible cases to be solved manually like quoted space near to be full.

    Note: Before checks you'll be noted about all unsaved changes.

    Note: To keep your time, quota checks are being performed only with settings being displayed. To be sure all disks were checked, provide deep quota limits scanning before.


    Analyzing quota settings

    One of the most interesting possibilities of WinQuota is not only that you can manage your quota settings silently, but also provided detailed statistics and suggestions for quota limits, by separate menu point “Recommendations”. The parts of information displayed here are also available by color hinting and by repair tool, but “Recommendations” window provides information in central place, with suggestions and errors to be solved.

    The typical view is displayed above; at this view you can see:

    • Integrity check report. If any warnings and errors appear, you can see it in details with exact names and count states. If any problems are reported, use Check/Repair possibilities to solve them.

    • Space efficiency report. This report indicates all quota limits to be full, near to be full, not used now, and other information. There are suggestions, so you can handle it yourself manually if so. For example, if such limit filled more than 95%, you can increase limits or just inform users to remove unnecessary files.

    • Statistics report. This report provides you various parameters, like space utilization coefficients, limits involved and other.

    The report can be copied as source:

    and saved separately as HTML file.

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    Managing Exclude Lists

    Since WinQuota 2.5.7, exclude lists are announced. These lists are used to indicate which files will not be counted in quota limits. It is useful for IIS log files, for example. You can specify files, directories, and simple file masks for exclude lists.

    The typical view of exclude files is displayed here:

    With appropriate dialog you are able to perform usual operations, like adding new file(s) or folders, change existing records and delete them. By pressing "OK" all exclude files are applied automatically and will be used after every reboot or shutdown without any user interaction.

    Another simple dialog provides you intuitive way to specify files; you can type it or find with browse button.

    Asterisks and question signs are applicable within file names, and treated as usual. Just simple examples:

    • c:\qtest\* indicates all files from folder c:\qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
    • c:\qtest\*.* indicates all files with extensions from folder c:\qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
    • c:\qtest\a* indicates all files starting with "a" from folder c:\qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
    • ?:\qtest\* indicates all files from all disks with folder \qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
    • c:\*.bmp indicates all BMP files from drive c on all folders that will be affected;
    Note: asterisk is treated as fat regular expression, and all subfolders will be used. For example, c:\qtest\*.log can eat both c:\qtest\12345.log as well as c:\qtest\somefolder\12345.log.

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    Registering your copy of WinQuota

    WinQuota provides ways to register trial version of WinQuota. If you want purchase WinQuota, start here. As purchase process will be completed, you'll receive your individual registration information. This information can be used with registration tool or with installation wizards. The current state of registration and evaluation can be seen at the dialog below.


    Operating with Windows NT Explorer Shell Extensions

    Shell extensions are the main and efficient way to manage quota limits; but there is no possibility to display analytics. To see statistics, suggestions, and for maintenance of quota settings use WinQuota Control Panel and Command line tools.

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    Choosing directory

    Windows Explorer is used with extensions to standard Properties dialog, as the following picture demonstrates:


    Managing Quota Settings

    The “Managing quota settings” form contains the following controls (see the image below):

    • Checkbox “Enable quota management”. It indicates if quota checks will be used automatically.
    • Checkbox “Deny disk space to users exceeded quota limit”. This checkbox indicates if all writing requests that exceed quota settings will be declined.
    • 3 buttons on the right of the form allow add, remove or change quota settings record.
    • List with quota settings currently applicable for specified directory.

    Additionally, actions being executed over push-buttons introduced above allow showing several slave dialogs. There are credentials choosing dialog and quota entity editing dialog.

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    Adding new Quota Entity

    Credential choosing dialog allows enumerating of all users in the system, including local users and groups, domain users and groups (in case computer is involved into corporal network). WinQuota works with domain structure from NT4WS to WinXP, including Active Directory support. This dialog supports asynchronous data retrieval mechanisms, and hierarchical representation of users, domains and groups as shown below:


    Changing Existing Quota Entity Values

    Quota settings dialog provides basic facilities to change quota settings:

    This dialog shows the initial path related to quota checks being modified, user, credentials belong to, and current settings applied already. You can apply the suffixes (K - kilobytes, M - megabytes, G - gigabytes) to specify limits.

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    Managing notifications

    Since WinQuota 2.0, the new mechanism is available to receive notifications in case soft quota limits exceeded. WinQuota provides UI to manage notifications, including 'any user defined' notification programs.

    At the time a soft quota limit is exceeded WinQuota launches all specified notification scripts (it can be any programs or scripts being supported by Windows Scripting Host), and passes detailed information about user, directory, quota limits and excess values.

    WinQuota provides ability to manage notifications as it is displayed in the following picture:

    Here you are able to manage all notifications that were registered for WinQuota. To see explanation of the parameters being assumed by your program, please take a look to the following table:

     Parameter  Description
     %1  directory with soft limit exceeded
     %2  user reaches soft limit
     %3  occupied size


    Adding new notification

    To add new notifications just type the script you need to be executed, or use "Browse" button to select it.

    WinQuota provides couple of useful scripts as examples; all of them are described separately. There are scripts to send email notifications, send SMS/pager messages, and other.

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