Manage the Space on Your Disks and Folders

good
key review info
application features
  • Automatically delete old folders
  • (2 more, see all...)

The amount of data that is being transferred nowadays is, simply put, staggering. More than that, the content that we continuously store on our disks requires a lot of space. To aid us with this issue, Liberty Disk Manager comes with a couple of features that will help us monitor the amount of available free space we have on our disks.

Before you download and install the software, it is certainly worth mentioning that the program is distributed for free. The program’s installation is pretty standard and we didn’t meet any glitches along the way. Once opened, the application greets us with an accessible and user friendly interface that is split into three major components. They are displayed in the following order: “Disk Monitor”, “Folder Monitor” and “Copy/Move”. The program also offers us a menu bar and a Settings button that can easily be accessed.

The  first is supposed to monitor the status of your disk drives. You are able to see the disk’s name, state and, of course, the amount of free space, alongside the free space threshold. When running the program for the first time you will have to select the disks you want to monitor. This is easily done via the Settings button, that also comes with a couple other options.

First of all, there's the ability to add the partitions / disks you want monitored and the possibility to set the free space threshold level, which is initially set at a default level of 50 Mb. Note that it can be easily modified or deleted.

It is also possible to change the refresh interval for your disks and to add a specific sound alert for running out of space. Furthermore, you can set the program to send an automatic e-mail message if the situation demands it.

The „Folder Monitor ” tab does what its name suggests, it watches the folders you want. You are able to see the folders that are being monitored, and the age threshold (displayed in days).

Why is this important you might ask, the answer is simple, because the main function of this window is to delete the folders that are older than your set threshold. This could come in really useful if you don’t want to waste time every time you want to organize your folder structure. As explained in the first section of the review, the monitored folders, along with the age threshold, refresh interval and alerts can be modified with the help of the Settings button.

The third and final component is surely meant to put the emphasis on the program’s ability to manage files. Simply called „Copy/Move”, it doesn’t require any computer experience whatsoever to guess what it’s intended for. To copy or move one folder to another you first have to select the source and destination folder, all possible, as you might have guest, from the Settings button. This button lets you set up the credentials for your FTP server, so you can transfer your data directly to the host you want.

A few other options are available in the Settings window this time around. For example, you can schedule a copy time at any existing hour, and you can also log all your activities to a text file, that you can choose to either clean manually or automatically. The scheduled copy option can be quite useful if, for example, you want to move a certain folder to another location after a download is finished.

The required copy button can be found in the Copy/Move section of the menu toolbar. As long as we are here we can also visit the Options window of the application.

Unfortunately, the options are pretty scarce for a so called disk manager. First of all, you will be able to start the Liberty Disk Manager automatically when the operating system boots and to minimize it after accessing it. I, for one, would have liked to see a larger list of preferences that relate to the program’s main functions. Also, a disk clean up utility would have made a nice addition, as it could come in really handy when we reach that free space threshold.

As for the E-mail tab found in the Options window, you’re pretty much covered. You can either use the MAPI option to send an e-mail through a mail client, or you can configure the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to send your notification messages directly to the server.

That being said, let us now see the stress level the PC had to endure when running Liberty Disk Manager. Fortunately, there isn’t much to report in this sector, as the 4MB of RAM used by the software were barely noticed, from a system that was running a 64 bit flavor Windows 7.


The Good

Liberty Disk Manager is a free application that can keep your computer organized and maximize your available space by removing your unwanted folders. A certain plus is its ability to directly upload files and folders to a FTP server.

The Bad

The most disappointing part is the lack of options it offers or, more likely, it doesn’t offer. Also, a simpler way to execute your copying / movement operations would have certainly had a bigger impact.

The Truth

The truth is that the program does the job it was meant to do. However, you have to wonder how useful can it really be when your operating system can pretty much do the same operations by default.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

 

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user interface 4
features 3
ease of use 4
pricing / value 3


final rating 3
Editor's review
good
 
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