[SOLVED] Application that inventories external hard drives?

[ObjectNull]

I have a large archive of old projects on a bunch of external hard drives and was wondering if there's an application I can use to scan my hard drives and create an index of them so I can search their contents without needing to plug them in?

I would like to be able to perform a search across all my hard drives (that are not plugged in) for a particular project or file and then, once I figure out what hard drive it's on, plug in the corresponding hard drive and grab the file.

Is there an application that can do that on Windows? I used to use an app just like that on Macs but I forgot what it was called.

Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

"without needing to plug them in "
"(that are not plugged in) "

I'm curious as to how you think this should work.

 

[jojesa]

I have used WinCatalog to index hard drive content,

I have a large archive of old projects on a bunch of external hard drives and was wondering if there's an application I can use to scan my hard drives and create an index of them so I can search their contents without needing to plug them in?

I would like to be able to perform a search across all my hard drives (that are not plugged in) for a particular project or file and then, once I figure out what hard drive it's on, plug in the corresponding hard drive and grab the file.

Is there an application that can do that on Windows? I used to use an app just like that on Macs but I forgot what it was called.

Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks!

I have been using WinCatalog but it isn't free though.
I index and catalog a disk while connected to the PC...then export the report to a CVS file...then store the disk away. I use the same name for the disk and the CVS file (e.g. 2019_disk-12).
I use Excel to read and search the content of a specific disk, so I don't go around connecting and searching several disks.
I also convert the CVS to PDFs.

 

[ObjectNull]

"without needing to plug them in "
"(that are not plugged in) "

I'm curious as to how you think this should work.

The way the app worked on Mac (again, I can't remember the name) was very simple - you'd plug in an external hard drive and use the app to scan it's contents, it would make a snapshot of the entire hard drive but without the actual files (it would show everything about them though, date created, file size etc... they just weren't there).

So when I opened the app, on the left side I'd see a list of ALL the hard drives I ever scanned into the app, I could search one, or all, or just drill down through the folders exactly like I would using the Finder, and once I identified the file I was looking for I'd know which hard drive I needed to connect and where it was on that hard drive.

 

[ObjectNull]

Just found the app I used to use on Mac. It's called DiskCatalogueMaker http://diskcatalogmaker.com/

 

[USAFRet]

Ah, OK.

Depending on how the projects and folders are named, you can do this with a simple batch file.

dir /a:d /b > list.txt
Writes a list of all folders under the current location. Writes out to a text file.

 

[Alabalcho]

Adobe' Photo Shop Elements can do that. It keeps catalogues with thumbnails, metadata etc, while actual photos are elsewhere. Unfortunately, it is not free (about $100), but once in a while it gets reduced on Microsoft' Store (meaning you can have it installed on several PCs).

You can download a trial copy directly from Adobe, and check it out.

 

[ObjectNull]

I have used WinCatalog to index hard drive content,

Thanks! I think that's exactly what I was looking for.