Improve temporarly unavailable drive handeling to avoid loosing the current path.
Posted: 2021-08-10, 11:22 UTC
Below are suggestions to improve Total Commander's drive handling when said drives are temporarily unavailable.
The current behavior, when a drive/path is/becomes unavailable, is to either silently modify the path to c:\ or to prompt to select a new drive.
This happens during the startup of Total Commander, when switching tabs, when selecting folders from the directory menu and also selecting the drive in the drive drop-down/menu button bar. It also happens when a network drive hasn't been finally mounted by Windows.
I'm aware the Windows Explorer, Norton Commander, Midnight Commander, and many others have this implemented this way, but that does not mean that it's good behavior, just that nobody tried to change it for the better!
Most of the time the current behavior disrupts one's workflow, especially since the path for the active tab is lost for good.
For me this is usually related to network drives that have not been remounted after Windows has restarted (where the drive is visible as a button in Total Commander, but invalid to access until after it has been opened once in Windows Explorer), network drives that suddenly become unavailable over an unstable VPN, or it's related to USB drives on electronics I'm currently developing.
I hope these suggestions will be considered for a future version of Total commander:
1. Allow invalid paths in tabs.
Allow the invalid path in the tabs and keep the lister contents (if available), but render the path in red color as a visual guide that it's invalid - hereby also avoiding a popup dialog. Optionally add an option to enable this behavior, if people really want the current behavior.
2. Try harder to resolve known but unmounted (network) drives.
Allowing invalids paths would mediate this problem, but it would be really great if Total Commander would try to re-establish the connection to the drive, just a Windows Explorer is able to do.
Best regards.
The current behavior, when a drive/path is/becomes unavailable, is to either silently modify the path to c:\ or to prompt to select a new drive.
This happens during the startup of Total Commander, when switching tabs, when selecting folders from the directory menu and also selecting the drive in the drive drop-down/menu button bar. It also happens when a network drive hasn't been finally mounted by Windows.
I'm aware the Windows Explorer, Norton Commander, Midnight Commander, and many others have this implemented this way, but that does not mean that it's good behavior, just that nobody tried to change it for the better!
Most of the time the current behavior disrupts one's workflow, especially since the path for the active tab is lost for good.
For me this is usually related to network drives that have not been remounted after Windows has restarted (where the drive is visible as a button in Total Commander, but invalid to access until after it has been opened once in Windows Explorer), network drives that suddenly become unavailable over an unstable VPN, or it's related to USB drives on electronics I'm currently developing.
I hope these suggestions will be considered for a future version of Total commander:
1. Allow invalid paths in tabs.
Allow the invalid path in the tabs and keep the lister contents (if available), but render the path in red color as a visual guide that it's invalid - hereby also avoiding a popup dialog. Optionally add an option to enable this behavior, if people really want the current behavior.
2. Try harder to resolve known but unmounted (network) drives.
Allowing invalids paths would mediate this problem, but it would be really great if Total Commander would try to re-establish the connection to the drive, just a Windows Explorer is able to do.
Best regards.