How Old is that Data on the Hard Drive?

“There is a system administrator theorem that is basically
written as “Users will find a way to use space faster than new
space can be added to systems.” The corollary to this theorem is,
“Users will always insist that all of their data is critical and
must be retained on-line.” The end result of this theorem and
corollary is that the explosion of storage is really a burden that
all system administrators must bear. What administrators need is a
tool or a set of tools to help them examine file systems to
determine what files and/or directories are being used and which
ones haven’t been used recently (i.e. the “age” of files and
directories).

“In this article I want to introduce a new application called
agedu, that can be used to get a snapshot of the age of files and
directories. From this information you can get a general sense of
what directories have older data that hasn’t been accessed (or
modified) in a while. It can also be used in scripts to create
reports about systems or for simply understanding what’s going on
with your storage, even on your desktop or laptop.”

Complete
Story