--- title: "A tour of the Data Parking window" url: https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-data-parking-window category: "Data Parking & moving folders" tags: ["data parking", "external drive", "moving folders"] summary: "The Data Parking window shows your Mac on the left and a destination on the right, with the move controls between them. Pair two folders with the same name, tick what you want to move, then press an action." updated: 2026-10-01T05:32:32.000Z --- # A tour of the Data Parking window The Data Parking window shows your Mac on the left and a destination on the right, with the move controls between them. Pair two folders with the same name, tick what you want to move, then press an action. The **Data Parking** window is two file browsers side by side with a control column between them. The left pane starts in your home folder; the right pane starts in Storage Studio's folder on your external drive. Nothing moves until you tick items and press an action. Open it from the **More** menu → **Data Parking…**. ## The two panes Each pane has a small toolbar along the top: - **Go up one level** (up arrow) and the **house** button, which takes the left pane to your home folder and the right pane to Storage Studio's folder on your drive. - **Choose folder** (folder icon) to jump anywhere with a standard Open panel. - On the right pane only, a **destination** button lists your drive, your connected cloud accounts and cloud folders on this Mac, plus **Choose any folder…**, **Manage cloud accounts…** and **Refresh destinations**. See [Parking a folder in a cloud account](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/parking-a-folder-in-a-cloud-account). - **Sort order** — sort by **Name**, **Size**, **Date modified** or **Date created**. Picking the same choice again flips the direction. Size and dates start with the largest or newest first. - The **eye** button shows or hides hidden items, such as folders whose names start with a dot. Hidden items inside a folder you move always go with it, whether or not they're shown. - **Refresh this pane** re-reads the folder and clears that pane's ticks. At the bottom of each pane, **All** ticks everything, and a line shows how many items are ticked and how much they hold. ### Real folder sizes Folder sizes are the space each folder really takes on disk, measured in the background. Storage Studio measures slowly on purpose so it never gets in the way of your own work. Until a folder has been measured, the total says how many are **still being measured** rather than guessing. Apps are listed but can't be ticked — move apps from the [Apps window](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-apps-window), which has its own safety checks. ## Pairing **Move**, **Merge** and **Relocate** only work once the two panes are **paired**. Pairing means "these two folders are the same place on two disks". 1. Open folders with the same name on both sides — for example, Projects on your Mac and Projects on your drive. The middle column says **Ready to pair**. 2. Click **Pair**. It now says **Paired** and **Hierarchy preserved**. 3. Open a subfolder on one side and the other side follows. Anything you move lands at the same place inside the paired folder on the other side. If the names differ, the column says **Not pairable** and **Folder names differ**. When the right pane is on your drive, a button offers to create the matching folder there (**Create on NVMe**), or to switch to one that already exists (**Use existing**). **Unpair** lets the panes move independently again. ```mermaid %% caption: How pairing turns on the move buttons flowchart TD A[Open a folder on each side] --> B{Same folder name?} B -->|No| C[Not pairable - create or open the matching folder] C --> A B -->|Yes| D[Ready to pair] D --> E[Click Pair] E --> F[Move, Merge and Relocate switch on] F --> G[Opening a subfolder on one side opens it on the other] ``` *Flowchart — How pairing turns on the move buttons. Outline:* - Open a folder on each side - leads to Same folder name? - Same folder name? - No: leads to Not pairable - create or open the matching folder - Yes: leads to Ready to pair - Not pairable - create or open the matching folder - leads to Open a folder on each side - Ready to pair - leads to Click Pair - Click Pair - leads to Move, Merge and Relocate switch on - Move, Merge and Relocate switch on - leads to Opening a subfolder on one side opens it on the other ## The middle column From top to bottom: - **Recent** — your recent pairings, so you can get back to a pair in one click. Pinned pairings are kept when you choose **Clear recent**. - The **gear** — **Data Parking settings**: **Parallel transfers** (1 to 16 copies at once, default 5), the **Verification level** (see [How copies are checked](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/how-copies-are-checked)) and the recent-write guard (see [When an app is holding a folder open](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/when-an-app-holds-a-folder-open)). - The **list** button — the history of recorded moves, with **Revert** for completed ones. See [The Moves log](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-moves-log). - The **terminal** button — **Live transfer logs**, a line-by-line record of each copy that you can copy for support. - **Home** — sends both panes back to their starting folders. - **What each action does** — a short explainer of every button. - The action buttons: **Move**, **Merge** and **Relocate** from left to right, and **Move** and **Merge** from right to left. See [Move, Merge or Relocate](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/move-merge-or-relocate). - **Send here →** and **← Send here**, which send ticked items into whatever folder the other pane is showing, with no pairing needed. You choose **Copy (Overwrite)**, **Copy (Merge)**, **Move (Overwrite)** or **Move (Merge)**, and your choice becomes the default. These run as [Data Transfers](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/data-transfers) jobs. - **Moves** — the live list of moves you started in this window. See also: [Moving folders safely](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/moving-folders-safely), [The shortcut left behind after a move](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-shortcut-left-behind), [Relocate](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/glossary-relocate). More answers: https://storagestudio.us/faq ## What links here - [Move, Merge or Relocate: which to choose](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/move-merge-or-relocate) - [Moving a folder back](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/moving-a-folder-back) - [Moving folders safely](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/moving-folders-safely) - [Moving with Storage Studio versus dragging in Finder](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/compared-with-dragging-in-finder) - [Parking a folder in a cloud account](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/parking-a-folder-in-a-cloud-account)