Product Reviews

From Chaos to Control: Tools4ever SpaceGuard

Is poor data storage management putting you through "network hell?" Perhaps a software-based storage management solution can save you.

• By Tony Northrup
• 10/01/2000

There’s not much to SpaceGuard. It was designed to add much-needed functionality to NT 4.0 without becoming too complex. If you’re still using NT 4.0 and plan to keep it around for a while, SpaceGuard is worth taking a look at. But if you’re already using Win2K, Space Guard doesn’t add much to the standard product, except for a few storage-management features. While the base operating system can log an event if a quota is exceeded, SpaceGuard goes a step further and sends an email or runs a command. There are some other minor things the software provides, but the feature I mentioned a moment ago is the only one worth noting. SpaceGuard lacks remote installation capabilities, so you have to manually install it on every monitored node. Reporting capabilities are limited to on-screen viewing, as shown in the figure, and exported delimited text. After putting SpaceGuard through its paces, here’s my (unsolicited) advice to Tools4ever: Add some features or lower your prices. Win2K has made the product almost obsolete.

SpaceGuard is great for NT 4.0 but doesn’t add much to Win2K. (Click image to see larger version.)