File tracking not working.

[flyarbo]

I have Windows XP Pro, SP3.

I'm using Tag2Find for the first time. Everything seems fine, successful install, service running fine.

When I move a file from one disk to another, the tag-file relationship vanishes. It's as if I never added the tag (or tags) and the file to the Tag2Find system. If I leave files alone (in the directory location they were in when originally tagged), everything works fine.

All involved disks are NTFS. Two dismountable disks are not included in the exercise.

File manager being used is Directory Opus. However, I tried the same thing with Windows explorer (dragging from one instance of Windows Explorer to another as the file move mechanism), and the exact same thing happened.

Please advise.

F.

[flyarbo]

Something I forgot to add.

All of this happens SILENTLY. The relevant tags of the moved file are just GONE (assuming the moved file was the only entry related to the tags at hand), and the file is gone. Make the mistake of moving a file and you could lose it's relationship in Tag2Find without any warning. You just find out the tag/file link is GONE when next you go to find it, confused because you're SURE you had tagged the file. NOW where is it?

F.

[martin]

Hmm,

I have to confess, I cannot reproduce the issue here... The important part is that the Alternate Data Streams get copied and that the NTFS Change Journal is working. I don't know anyhting about the file manager you mentioned, but it should definitely work with Windows Explorer, as long as the ADS gets copied... I will investigate, but to be honest, I don't know where to start.

Best regards,
Martin

[flyarbo]

Let's pretend I never mentioned the "other" file manager. Let's just stick with Windows Explorer, which doesn't work for this either. If it works with Windows Explorer, I'm more than happy.

[martin]

Does it work if you are just renaming the files on one partition (rename or move to another directory on the same partition)? Or is file tracking not working for you at all?

Did it ever work or didn't it work at all?

If it does not work within a single partion, try resetting the USN Journal (i.e. the NTFS Change Journal which is used for tracking). You can do so by opening a command prompt and using "fsutil usn deletejournal", which should stop the current journal and trigger tag2find to re-activate a new journal.

Best regards,
Martin

[flyarbo]

Interesting results.

Renaming the file in place or copying to another directory on the same partition (internally about the same thing) DOES work very nicely. I did not know that.

All my previous tracking experiments involved moving from one hard drive to another, both NTFS. I never tried single partition changes. I don't know, therefore, if it worked before for single partition changes. AFAIK, it never worked for drive-to-drive moves, and still does not.

Should I still try resetting the NTFS Change Journal to get drive-to-drive moves working?

[martin]

Well, that's actually unexpected for me... I don't see any reason why the local tracking is working and the cross-partition tracking is not (it really is working on both, source and target partition alone?).

You can try resetting the journal, it won't make matters worse, but I don't expect it to help much.

Still need to think about this, as I can't see a reason for the behavior you are describing.

Best regards,
Martin

[flyarbo]

Yep. It's definitely working on source and target partitions (in this case, two different drives, not just two partitions), as long as you STAY on the one drive or the other. Move files ACROSS from one drive to another, Tag2Find forgets all about them.

Guess I'll give up. Seems like a cool tool, and it's just what I'm looking for (even better, actually), but I can't get it to work reliably. I'm all riddled with trust issues now.

Thanks for trying anyway.

F.

[martin]

From what you describe, the alternate data streams containing the tags and tracking information do not get copied over. To verify this, you could do the following:

Copy/Move a file to the other drive. Drag it to the t2f Main Window and right-click it and select "Check Database for File..." from the context menu.

If this does not bring up the tags, the ADS do not get moved/copied accross drive boundary in your setup and I don't know what could cause this... Windows Explorer definitely copies the ADS with a file in any other setup I have tested. If they do show up, then I need to dig deeper in T2F code.

Best regards,
Martin