I have found varieties of this question. Most of them fall under monitoring and others are said to be buggy. A continuously monitoring program won't help me and neither will a list of the most recently modified files. I would like to check if the directory, its sub folders and files have changed since my last visit. It seems to me that I'd likely need a program that maintains and index of that directory and compares it with its condition when I tell it to. Then that program could output to a log for my use. This is on Windows 7 over a shared network, the folder(s) I'd like to check have 4-50GB of data. I did find this, however I am still learning how to program. I think it describes what I want: http://www.rgagnon.com/javadetails/java-0490.html Thanks for considering.