Drives

• Drives Menus
• Remap
• Refresh Media
• Multiple Trees
• Drive Operations

The Drives Window

The Drives window contains the list of drives. It is user adjustable in height only. It does dynamically adjust in width to the font dropped on the window. It is always located at the extreme left of the FS/2 application window.

In the example shown below, drives I:, J: and K: are in memory and displayed in the Directories window with the active drive being drive J:.

Drives Window

Drives List

The Drives window normally lists the all the drives available. There are control options available in the Available Drives dialog window to allow selective hiding of any drive in the list (this does not affect the drive visibility in other applications) and to automatically hide drives not recognized by the system. The drive list may be dynamically updated when remote or removable drives are added to or removed from the system.

Drives List

The drives list does not include drive icons. Instead, inactive drives other than local fixed, RAM and floppy drives, are colored with different background colors whenever the drive list dynamically changes as follows:

• CD/DVD - Dark gray
  
• Removable media - Blue
  
• LAN - Dark red
  
• FTP/NDFS - Dark green
  
• All other types - Yellow

Note: The colored drives list is optional and set on by default. There is no setup control but the option of colored drives can be toggled on/off with Ctrl+Alt+F5.

When the inactive drives are listed with colored backgrounds, clicking in the Directories or Files windows restores the normal background color. However, the associated background colors may be activated with a single click in the Drives titlebar or a second single click in the Drives window free space.

Although there is only one list of drives, it is updated whenever the active Files window is changed to reflect the active drive(s) for that window. The window background color is also changed to match the active Files window.

Drive Selection

The Drives window may be set to operate in two different states, single or multiple drive selection, by setting the Drives->Multiple Trees option. Single drive tree operation is the default setting as it uses less memory and is simpler to use. If Multiple Trees are in use, the drive list will show all the drives that have drive trees in the Directories window, which are available without a drive rescan, with special foreground/background colors. The queued drives in use (in memory) are colored either with black/white (current active) or dark cyan/white background/foreground. In this moding, a single click on a drive letter will select that drive, regardless of the setup options, as the active device and cause the current directory to be selected in the appropriate tree.

Using a Mouse

Single LMB clicks on a drive letter may be optionally set as follows:

• Multiple Trees Option Off (default):
• Single Click Drives/Directories Option On (default):
• LMB Single Clicks - A single click of a drive already in memory will switch the current drive in the Directories window and read the files in the current directory on that drive into a Files window. To simply select the drive in memory for the purpose of performing some drive function, use a RMB single click (which activates the context menu) or Ctrl+click the drive letter (no context menu).
• LMB Double Clicks - Double clicks are used to add a drive to the queued drives.
  
• Single Click Drives/Directories Option Off: --
  
• A LMB single click selects the drive only for the purpose of performing some setup option or function. This is standard system operation.
• LMB Double Clicks - Opens or rescans the drive. Standard OS operation.

• Multiple Trees Option On:
• LMB Single Clicks - A single click of a drive already in memory will switch the current drive in the Directories window and read the files in the current directory on that drive into a Files window. To simply select the drive in memory for the purpose of performing some drive function, use a RMB single click (which activates the context menu) or Ctrl+click the drive letter (no context menu).
• LMB Double Clicks - Double clicks are used to add a drive to the queued drives.

Using the Keyboard

A drive is selected, but not scanned, by using the keyboard up/down cursor keys or by simply pressing the desired drive keyboard key. Pressing keyboard Enter will make the selected drive active scan it into a drive tree. As an example, press F5 to activate the Drives window, then keys 'C' and 'Enter' to activate the C: drive and scan its directories into the Directories window tree view. The Files window will be populated with the the files of the current directory of C:, using the current file filter if one is set.

Drive Map Options

The drive map is either manually or automatically updated by user selection of remap options.

Menus

There are identical popup and pulldown menus for the Drives window. A single click with the RMB anywhere in the drives list will select and display the popup menu for the selected drive. A RMB click in free space, if any exists in the window, displays the menu for the active drive.

Action Bar Drives Menu