How can you tell if a file has dependants?

Does anyone know of a great tool that can tell if there are files out of a folder that have programs that depend on them?

For example:
I dabble in music production and have a very large amount of sounds & recordings in a folder. The folder is 34.2gb in size and I can guarantee that only about half of those files are being used. I would like to delete all the unused files, but safely.

Even further example:
Say my folder has 100 sounds and recordings in it. I have 1 music project. My 1 music project loads 25 of those 100 sounds when it is opened. ( Software > Software File > Uses 25/100 sounds )
There will be 75 sound files that are not being used at all. The only way to know is to go through them all, if it was really 100, I wouldn't mind spending a half an hour sorting them out but in my case, there are 2,562 sound files and who knows how many projects that depend on those files.

So, I am hoping someone knows of an easier way to separate the used and unused files so I can delete the unused files safely.

Hi Slim,

Sysinternals Process Monitor will show file access in real-time and it looks like you can also log the activity to review at a later date. I haven't used this much myself but looks like it can help.

Linky >> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 96645.aspx <<

Sludge

Hmmm, I have been trying to figure it out but I don't think it does what I need. It shows file access in real-time like you said. I need a tool that can show if a file has dependents that use that file, although neither are currently running (so no real-time). If that makes any sense...

That does make sense Slim but I don't know of any applications that can do this. There might be some used for application/software development but that's not really my field I'm afraid.

sludge

Would this suit your needs Slim:
http://www.dependencywalker.com/

Edit: that should work for executables and DLLs etc, but it looks like you're wanting something that will work for data files.
If so, I'm not sure that this is even possible unless you look in each file to see if it references any other file, and in what context. And that won't be 100% effective either.