Directory Monitor is an interesting tool for watching particular folders and telling you about files being created, changed or deleted there.

Launch the program and click Add to give it a folder - either local, or a network share - which you'd like to be monitored.

You can also indicate the events you're interested in ("New Files", "Modifications", "Deletions" or "Renames"), and may optionally choose to monitor subfolders.

And there's even an option to launch a particular application whenever an event occurs.

This all worked well in our tests. We pointed the program at our system drive, ran various applications and Windows tasks, and were able to watch as files were created, modified and deleted.

If you need more power then plugins are available from $5 to play a sound, send an email or write to a database when a particular event occurs.

In addition, a Pro version (from $99/ year) includes all the plugins, runs as a service, displays the user/ application/ process behind each change, uses Snapshots to determine changes even when a share is down or the machine was off, and more.