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

Question

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

The contents is not saved in a structured manner, however; basically there's lots of project data for lots of projects.

Is there any software for Windows XP that will catalog all the hard drives, so I can search the catalog, find the files, and get the ID of the disk that has the content?

Answer 1

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):

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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

JR Directory Printer is freeware and portable.

Answer 5

Advanced Disk Catalog is another good tool.