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How do I catalog files on several external hard drives that I want to store off-line?

How do I catalog files on several external hard drives that I want to store off-line?

I have quite a few external hard drives that I want to store off-line, and possibly off-site.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 275
Total answers/comments: 5
bert [Entry]

"See the freeware Gentibus CD.
It works well for all file types and has a good and quick search function (that you can see in the image below):"
bert [Entry]

"Where is it?

WhereIsIt is an application written for Windows operating systems, and designed to help you maintain and organize a catalog of your computer media collection, including CD-ROMs and DVDs, audio CDs, diskettes, removable drives, hard drives, network drives, remote file servers, or any other present or future storage media device Windows can access as a drive.

It's shareware."
bert [Entry]

"You can always roll-yer-own from the commandline. I use this in Cygwin to create md5 checksums for data files getting backed up to data DVD. My primary use is verifing the data after burning, but I keep the file (renamed to reflect the disc label, and moved to a common directory with md5 files of other backups). Searching is as easy as grep'ing through that directory for a filename or keyword (say, a project name that might be found in folder names, since the md5 will store relative paths for each file).

In your case, assuming the data drive was mounted to E:, I'd start in /cygdrive/e/:

$ ( cd /cygdrive/e/ ; find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum >> ~/e-drive.md5.txt ; cp ~/e-drive.md5.txt . )

That's everything on the drive, so the drive can be disconnected and stored. Now move the md5 file into wherever you're archiving the md5 files, and give it a more identifiable name:

$ mv ~/e-drive.md5.txt ""~/My Documents/Archive Drives/New_E_Drive_Label.md5.txt""

When you need a file, or a project, search for a known keyword (or string of them -- say, only show .DOC files associated with Project X):

$ cd ""~/My Documents/Archive Drives""
$ grep ""Project X"" * | grep -i doc
New_E_Drive_Label.md5.txt:53:0123456789abcdef0123456 Projects/Project X/Design.doc
New_E_Drive_Label.md5.txt:54:0123456789abcdef0123456 Projects/Project X/Testing.doc
New_E_Drive_Label.md5.txt:55:0123456789abcdef0123456 Projects/Project X/World Domination.doc
Some_Other_Drive.md5.txt:2:0123456789abcdef0123456 Project X rulez.doc
Old_Broken_Drive.md5.txt:17:0123456789abcdef0123456 What is this Project X again.doc

... you get the idea. That's certainly not the prettiest output, but it cleans up nice with a little perl/python. Or import it into a spreadsheet or database, test your awk skillz, whatever."
bert [Entry]

"use JR Directory Printer to catalog the drives, output in TXT files, easy to search.

JR Directory Printer is freeware and portable."
bert [Entry]

"I used to use WinCatalog (nag), Disk Explorer Pro 3, and a bunch of others.

Then I tried the du option thinking text would be the simplest option. Not only did it result in a file size of 1/2 G, search would be within Notepad which is kludgy (doesnt filter non-matches)

Then I went back to the DEPro3, not only is file size for the same drive just 39KB, its search is fast and filters other crud out, and is great for organizing many drives.

Imagine cataloging many drives with du !!

Time to index: du & VVV took > 2 hours; WinCat - forever; DEPro3 - 5 min!! - heck was I impressed !

Most of all, size of resulting indexed file matters if you are storing it in a cloud drive, specially during sync."