Still no file comment function after all these years

NTFS, the file system, knows NOTHING about the format of the primary stream of the file. What it DOES know about are attributes and alternate streams. There is no 1500 byte "section" of any file that is managed by NTFS. As for "sticking the whole file in there" perhaps you mean resident files where the file "contents" are stored in the Master File Table (MFT) instead of in clusters on disk. Usually this is limited to 700-800 bytes. I doubt that this is where you want to save your comments.

I'd suggest an alternate data stream. Just make sure you name it consistently because it's pretty well hidden. Incidentally, this functionality *IS* built into Windows and has been for about a decade (give or take a few years). What comments you might store in a separate file simply save to the same file using notation like this:

originalfilename.ext:comment.ext

So, say you have that ZIP file and want to potentially include an entire readme file with it just save the readme content as

foo.zip:readme.txt.

Only it's not that easy!

In Windows 2000 you could just edit the Comments attribute on most any file by right clicking and selecting the Summary tab. This was cool. Microsoft turned it off to "help" the simpler folks out there. You see, since that additional information was not stored in the "file" but rather in an alternate NTFS stream it would be lost if that file were copied to a non-NTFS volume. You'd get a scary "alternate stream" dialog that was deemed to confusing for mere mortals.

In addition, they altered the common file dialogs to reject the colon character to prevent the nifty trick of using alternate stream naming like foo.zip:readme.txt BUT the feature is still there in the filesystem.

Here's how to use it in 7:

Press Windows+r to bring up the Run... dialog. Type "notepad", drag the file you'd like to comment onto the dialog, append :comment to the end of the line and hit Enter. The line will look like this:

notepad d:\Desktop\wep.zip:comment

You'll get invited to create a new file that you can type or paste content into and then save. This content will be stored along with the file in a named alternate stream that you can access in the same way as you created it. Windows+r, type notepad drag the file, append :comment and hit enter.

If you want to make things easier for yourself you can integrate this functionality into the context menu of all files using the Send To feature by creating this file:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo\Comment Editor.vbs

containing this line:

WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell").Run "notepad " & WScript.Arguments(0) & ":comments.txt"

Some notes:

The word :comment is not special, you can name the alternate stream whatever you want as long as it's a filesystem legal string. Neither the size or presence of the alternate streams show up in Explorer so they make a nifty place to hide stuff. If want a list of files that have alternate streams you'll need to use a command prompt with the /r switch. Also, that bit about copying files with alternate streams to non-NTFS volumes still holds --you'll get a message about it if you try.

There appears to be a way to restore the old Windows 2000 functionality to selected files in 7 as well. It would involve some more investigation but if there's any interest I'll work on it.

I assumed WinFS was being developed to replace NTFS but it seems that WinFS is not a complete disk part systems, just a subsystem. I agree, NTFS is OLD and needs to be updated big time.

MilesAhead said:

There's no need to PM me just because you reply to my post. I'm notified of follow ups. The inner workings of the file system aside, seems like after all these years a comment function in the context menu should be doable for all files.

It is doablable for all files. Just not on all supported file systems. Pity they have to accomodate legacy systems and couldn't force the world to use NTFS exclusively.

MilesAhead said:

It shouldn't be up to me to do it. Evidently there was demand for it since it was half-assed implemented in earlier versions of Windows. They are indexing everything else whether we like it or not. Seems they could give us 1 kb associated with a file. Sheesh!!

But it is up to you to do it. They can't. It would get lambasted as data loss at one extreme or a kludge on the other. That's why it was removed. They not only have given you 1kb associated with a file but terabytes potentially cut up in as many named streams as you'd likely ever use.

How about updating your shell extension to use :stream storage and drop Win98 and non-NTFS support. It would seem to be an improvement for the OS and the extension.

mmmmm

Despite the tension in here , thank you , baarod...

I've learned a couple of new things from this thread.