What's Keep-It Home News - Keep-It 3.0 Product Download History .   Using Keep-It Demonstration FAQ Tips & Tricks .   Applications Sharing history Saving space Projects Legalese .   Support Help Known problems Report a problem . If you have a question which isn't answered below, please contact us. We'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. How do I schedule a snapshot? How much disk space does Keep-It consume? What resources does Keep-It use? How much does Keep-It cost? Is Keep-It safe and reliable? Can I use Keep-It with 16-bit Windows (3.0, 3.1, etc)? Can I use Keep-It archives on other platforms (Mac, Linux, etc)? What can I store in a Keep-It archive? Can I put folders in a Keep-It archive? How big can a Keep-It archive be? We use a source control system, so is Keep-It useful? Can I open archive contents directly from within an application? What sort of compression does Keep-It use? Is Keep-It Y2K ready? How do I schedule a snapshot? First ensure you have Task Scheduler installed, and thats it's running. To see if Task Scheduler is installed, look in My Computer for the Scheduled Tasks folder. You may also see a small icon on the task bar, which acts as a short-cut to the scheduler. If Task Scheduler isn't installed, go to Installing Task Scheduler. To see if Task Scheduler is running, open the Scheduled Tasks folder, and look under the Advanced pulldown menu. If the first option is Stop Using Task Scheduler, then Task Scheduler is running. Select the archive you wish to have automatic snapshots generated for, and go to its properties, either from the File menu, or archive's context menu. In the properties tabbed dialog you should see a Schedule tab. If no such tab exists, Task Scheduler is not installed. Note: you can also get to the Schedule dialog from within an archive, by selecting Folder Options from the View pulldown. On the Schedule dialog you will see a New button that enables you to create a new schedule for automatic snapshots. Use the Advanced button for more options after selecting New. How much disk space does Keep-It consume? Keep-It is installed in the system folder and consumes less than half a megabyte. Keep-It is not a gigantic application. Rather, it's an extension to the Windows Explorer. Most of the functionality found within Keep-It comes from the Explorer. This means not only is Keep-It small, but it also integrates seamlessly into your existing environment. What resources does Keep-It use? Keep-It consumes no system resources when not in use. Using Keep-It normally saves disk space, but memory and processing power are used when creating new 'Snapshots'. To minimize processor overhead (at a cost to disk space), disable 'compressing differences'. If you have an older (486) machine, don't use the maximum compression level. If disk space is not an issue, you might wish to turn-off compression. On the other hand, if you want to send archives via e-mail, or put them on floppy disks, you might want to enable maximum compression. All these options can be found on the View/(Folder)Options/Settings menu option when viewing an archive. How much does Keep-It cost? Nothing. Keep-It is Freeware. However, it may only be used, subject to the licensing conditions. Keep-It is not public domain, and is subject to copyright laws. Keep-It will continue to be free to use for the foreseeable future. Ultimately Keep-It will seed a number of add-ons which will add value to information stored within Keep-It archives. Some of these add-ons may not be free to use. Is Keep-It safe and reliable? Keep-It cannot damage your files. Keep-It archives only contain revisions of your work, not the actual files and folders. Keep-It has been extensively tested on a number of platforms to ensure archive integrity under all conditions. Should an archive ever become corrupt, you will always be able to retrieve what has been stored to date. Can I use Keep-It with 16-bit Windows? No. Keep-It is a 32-bit program and requires Windows '95, '98, or NT. In addition, Keep-It integrates with the Microsoft Explorer which was never shipped with 16-bit Windows. To use Keep-It with NT3.5, you will have to install the 'shell update' service pack. However, Keep-It has not been tested using this OS/Explorer combination! Can I use Keep-It archives on other platforms? Not yet. Currently Keep-It is only available for 32-bit Windows. However, preliminary plans have been made to develop both a Mac and Linux version of the product. A Linux port is likely to be produced soon (for both Intel and Sparc platforms). Initially a command line version will be beta'd. Depending on the GUI to be used (GNOME, etc.), an integrated version will likely be available in the year 2000. What can I store in a Keep-It archive? Anything you can add to a folder, you can add to a Keep-It archive. Keep-It has no pre-programmed knowledge of any file type. Instead it 'learns' on the fly how best to spot differences between revisions, and so how best to save space. Keep-It archives can contain any mixture of file and folder types. This makes archiving any project a snip. If you've a database, program sources, and documents all in a single project, you can use Keep-It to maintain them all (in synchronization). Can I put folders in a Keep-It archive? Yes. Folders are treated just like files (except you can browse them!). A folder is deemed to have changed when the items it contains change. Folders also change when the number of items contained change. Adding an item, deleting an item, or renaming an item, will all cause Keep-It to consider the folder changed. Keep-It's ability to archive folders provides a powerful means to archive projects. If you add a project's folder to an archive, Keep-It will look after every new item you add to, and delete from, the project. No more manually adding new files to a source control system! How big can a Keep-It archive be? Keep-It archives can (theoretically) be no larger than 2GB (2000MB). However, Keep-It archives are designed to be project, not disk, oriented. Archiving a whole disk would be inappropriate (and slow). We regularly test Keep-It with 500MB archives. At this size, even with modern hardware, we have to wait for new snapshots to be created. As a rule of thumb we reckon 500MB is a comfortable working maximum. An archive may contain many revisions of many files. This in effect limits the maximum size of any contained file. Because Keep-It highly compresses its content, a single file may still be up to 2GB, but practically you should consider 500MB a working maximum. We use a source control system, so is Keep-It useful? The advantage Keep-It offers over any source control system is you don’t have to check everything in-and-out to record a 'check-point'. With Keep-It you can just 'hit' New Snapshot, and all your current work is saved (snapped, recorded, maintained!). If you decide after a bit of 'hacking' you want to go back five minutes, then you can just drag out the last desired revision, or restore the whole snapshot (if you’ve changed multiple related files). Keep-It is very light-weight. It doesn’t do all the things a source control system does, it’s not intended to replace SCCS/PVS/VSS (we still use a conventional source control system ourself), but it does allow you to do tens-of (as oppose one-of) check-ins per hour. Going back to a previous revision of a file (or group of files) is also much easier than with a source control system (the archive looks just like a regular Explorer window with revisions in it - like VMS or other revisioned file system). Can I open archive contents directly from within an application? Not really. It would be possible to browse archive contents directly from those applications which use the standard Windows File Open dialog, but this might create some potential confusion. Archives only contain revisions. By the very definition of a revision, you can't change it! Of course, you could always use Save As if you changed the revision, but you'd have to save the revision to some place outside the archive. If you think we should work on this area, say so! You can open a revision directly while browsing an archive. This does the same thing as opening from within the application (except you're using the Explorer). Of course, you have to use Save As if you want to make any changes. What sort of compression does Keep-It use? That's a tough question; Keep-It uses multiple compression techniques. Keep-It always uses (independent of archive settings) 'differencing' to minimize the amount of storage used to record a new revision of a file or folder. This is the most significant compression technique used by Keep-It. If you consider an average 100KB Word document, then storing just the differences of 10 revisions ensures only a fraction of the storage required for ten copies is used. Keep-It also uses conventional compression techniques to further compress the differences. In fact, just storing one revision of a number of files in a Keep-It archive (with maximum compression enabled) will result is a smaller file than either Winzip or Pkzip could produce. Keep-It can be used as a better Winzip (it's also better integrated into the Explorer). Is Keep-It Y2K ready? Yes. Keep-It has been thoroughly tested for any millennium problems. Make sure your OS is appropriately updated for Y2K. For NT4, you should install Service Pack 5. For Windows 95, see www.microsoft.com. 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