My understanding was that if all else fails when formatting a folder that it would become a content type=custom, the default.
When I went to my removable drive tonight I saw the old System Volume Information and $RECYCLE.BIN and decided that I was finally going to fix the format to hide these files.
My first attempt was to go into the custom format and I created a filter like this:
Under hide files I had:
desktop.ini
Under hide folders I added:
(System Volume Information|$RECYCLE.BIN)
The desktop.ini has been in there from a long time ago and worked so I just added the last too. Went back to refresh my display and WALAH nothing changed.
That seemed wrong to me because at the very least it DO should apply the Custom format to everything as I understood it. I left the Custom format set as it was and decided that I would add the same filter to the Removable Drive format since it is a WD Deskbook or something like that, a USB drive.
I added the exact same filters as I had in the Custom thinking that the Removable Drive format had overridden the Custom format. But once again I went back and refreshed the display and WALAH nothing changed.
I then added the Content Type box to one of my toolbars to easily see what was going on. But that just confused me more because it said "None" which agreed with hovering over the little lock. Why wouldn't it at the very least display Custom? Then when I clicked on the drop down I realized that it isn't even capable of displaying anything but the formats under Content Format in the preferences. It could never display Custom even though most folders would default to that.
But I think it should display what ever value is truly being used regardless of Custom or Removable Drive or maybe even display it as a hierarchy so the user can actually see how the sequence of formats were chosen and applied. But what I'm wondering now is when does DO ever use a Removable Drive format and how would I know or for that matter how would I know that any of those Default Formats is being used? Secondly is there something wrong with my filter and it's appearing like the Removable Drive format isn't working? And third since I can't apply the filter in the Custom format how do I apply it to all drives?
Content Type is not the same as Folder Format. Content Type is a specific kind of Folder Format, one that is triggered by lots of files of a particular type in the folder. (See number 1 in the Folder Formats: Detailed Guide for a rundown of the different types of folder format.)
The way to tell which format is in use is to hover over the Format Lock in the status bar. Do not click it, just hover the mouse over it. (See number 6 in the Folder Formats: Detailed Guide.)
Make sure you close the window and open a new one when testing format changes, to avoid inheriting old settings that the window was preserving. (Number 6 in the Folder Formats: Quick Guide. Numbers 7 & 8 in the Detailed Guide explain some of the reasons why windows can preserve their current settings.)
I did read through that overview. If you read what I wrote you'll see that I did hover - gave me the same answer.
From your own #1
Default Formats are used when no others apply.
You can tell Opus to use different formats for different drive types, like Network Drives and Local Drives. For example, the Description column shows a useful summary of information about various file types, and is really useful on fast local drives, but you may not wish to have it enabled on slow network drives because it requires opening the files and reading their contents.
You can turn off Default Formats that you don't want to use. The only exception is the Custom format which is the fallback used if no other format applies. From your #4 You can also untick the Default Formats you don't want to use, except the one called Custom which is what gets used whenever no other format is more applicable.
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Today when I hovered it told me it was picking it up from the Local Drives but it should be listed as a Removable drive.
They're all formats Content Formats are just driven differently. It still doesn't answer the question as to why it's not coming up as a Removable Drive? And at what point does the Custom Format stop applying and the various special or drive formats begin even ignoring the content types all together? What determines which default format is more applicable than another?
So I have placed my format in the Local Drive Format and it works but like I said it's a removable drive and what determines if a particular folder falls into two formats which format wins? I'm guessing that there truly isn't a format that covers all and instead you have to put your specifics into any possible format that it might fall into. Is that accurate?
All my drives regardless of type be that USB, network, local hard drives, faux cloud storage, etc are all assigned to drive letters I don't see any separation under My Computer as they're listed by drive letter. In my case C, D , E are all local hard drives, F is a USB, G and H are network drives, I is cloud storage provider, J and K are emulated optical drives, M, N, O, S, T and V are all network drives and Z is a local optical drive. And that's the order they are listed in.
Drive letters are not that relevant here. A drive can be assigned a drive letter whether it is mounted as fixed or removable.
Group By -> Type in the Computer folder. You can use Opus or Explorer, they should show the same thing.
If your drive has Type = Local Disk and is in the Hard Disk Drives section instead of the Drives With Removable Storage section, then it is not a removable drive.
You might think of it as removable, as you can physically unplug it, but that is true of all hard drives (you normally have to open your computer case to unplug them, but Windows doesn't care about that).
"Removable drive" means a specific way of mounting a drive in Windows so that it can be "ejected" in some way, ensuring all pending changes have been written to it first, without shutting down the OS.
Sometimes you can choose which way a drive is mounted, as removable or fixed, but how to do that (and whether you can do it at all) depends on the drive, drivers, and other software involved in mounting it.
My DO does not show like that but I did remember something like that in Explorer. So I went back to Explorer which has a Group by setting which you can set to type and now I see what you're talking about.
Effectively from what I can see optical drives, possibly floppy disks (although I don't have one so I don't know for sure), maybe memory cards and for whatever reason cloud storage is considered removable.
I thought the answer was going to be unchecking the Local and Network formats and force it to default to the Custom format but the formats only address the "right side" not the folder tree. Ultimately what I really wanted was the Global Filter which should probably be with the rest of the filters just for ease of use and understanding.
