We Got Served

This add-in was a mystery to me.  I downloaded it, installed it, and was expecting to see a duplicate file finder add-in.  It wasn’t.  I uninstalled it and it has been sitting there, forgotten ever since, waiting for me to reinstall it.  Well, it was time for me to check it out again for a review.

This time I took a closer at it.  This is basically a Windows Explorer inside of the console.  This is quite a nice concept and I wish I had given it a more complete look-see the first time around.  This is a nice complementary program to Sam Wood’s WHS Disk Management, and should have perhaps been named: WHS Shares Explorer.

Installing this add-in is as simple as any other add-in.  Copy the msi installer to your D:SoftwareAdd-ins folder, open the WHS Setting Window in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.

Once it has installed, reopen the console and click on the Duplication Info tab.  You will find 2 windows inside the console under this tab.

The window on the left is your basic Windows Explorer type folder layout.  As you burrow down through the tree, a folders content will become displayed in the right window.  After you highlight a particular folder, you can click on the Explore option, which will open Windows Explorer.  “See” it Duplication Info and “touch” it in Windows Explorer.  If you do some maintenance in Explorer, you will have to click on the Refresh button to update Duplication Info.

One item you will notice is that as you explore the folder tree, Duplication Info displays the physical disk location of each file.  Interesting?  Yes.  Useful?  I’ll let you decide.

That is about all there is to the add-in.  As I have found with many community add-ins, they often appear as though they could be placed in the category of: “This is an example of what you can do for an add-in”  A single concept, often with unique feature(s).  This is one such program.  It has potential for users who access their WHS directly through the console, and it does have one rather unique feature.

I do hope that the author of Duplication Info continues to develop this add-in.  As I indicated at the beginning, it has the potential to be a nice complementary program to WHS Disk Management.  A change to the add-in name would be quite beneficial to better describe its function, also.

Author: Yotsuba
Version Reviewed: 1.2.0.0
Release: 3Aug2008

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