Twice, thrice maybe I have deleted folders that were in the hundreds of gigabytes by mistake.
I like to run in dual view where "I thought I was in the left pane when I was actually on the right" as I expressed clicked my way to disaster.
Without backups, recovering is problematic. I use a recycle bin replacement that does not cut it on large directory deletes, and recovering with undelete utilities rarely gets to 50%.
Thus I wonder about two things:
Is there any facility in Dopus that would allow for the creation of directory and file catalogs once a day so that there is a recent record of disk contents preferably in XML but ultimately in any kind of format? This would aid in knowing what was lost. Right now, I am using a disk cataloger for network shares (this works well) but the program is too old to automate. Maybe there is something scripted for Dopus that does this?
Is there any facility in Dopus that would prevent me harming myself? Like, for really large directory trees, there would be a special warning like "Dude, 100's of GIGS are going to be lost - are you out of your mind?" Probably an unrealistic desire. But frankly, sometimes I am working and organizing for hours and find it difficult to maintain proper focus before deleting.
Typically for me, its a select all (Conrol-A) and delete, yes, yes, wait, oh-no! So can I protect the directory but more can I protect its contents? Is there a way to make one sub directory undeletable so that a control-a would halt on the first error? Well, you can see, I am groping here. I need a light bulb as mine has burnt out.
In any case, I would be interested in possible approaches to the problem. And please consider I've been punished already. Thank-you
[quote="jjmorgan"]2. Is there any facility in Dopus that would prevent me harming myself? Like, for really large directory trees, there would be a special warning like "Dude, 100's of GIGS are going to be lost - are you out of your mind?" Probably an unrealistic desire. But frankly, sometimes I am working and organizing for hours and find it difficult to maintain proper focus before deleting.
[/quote]
For very important locations, you could make one or multiple instances of "@confirm":
@ifpath:(G:\important*|H:\veryimportant*|I:\mostimportant) @Confirm Caution! you are about to erase important files!|continue|abort @Confirm are you really sure?|continue|abort
That way you'd be only asked twice in certain directories. BUT, i didn't test it with trees. But i guess, that would work equally well.
Preferences / Display / Colors and Fonts / File display background: Destination background is a good way to make it more clear which side is active, by making the source and destination sides have different background colors in addition to the existing visual cues about which side is active.
Preferences / File Display Modes / Details / Grid lines only in source file display is another, if you choose a conspicuous grid line style and/or color.
Both of those will make the whole file display change visually based on which side it is on, in addition to the border and selection colors that should change by default.
You could also move the Delete button in to the File Display toolbar, so you have one delete button for each side and can't act on the wrong side by mistake (except via the keyboard, but when using the keyboard you're usually more aware of which side is active, in my experience).
Thank you both. Setting the source pane to reds and leaving the target pane at blues made the most sense to me because if I am going to accidentally delete a directory it will be in the source mode. Amazing how big of a difference this makes - you can see the source side at a glance.
Also moving the delete button helps because it puts it inside the now red (or blue) color bar.
Good advice - thank-you.
Not sure what to do with @confirm approach, but thanks.