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Enkiduforest

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 15, 2009
2
0
I am looking for a software that could help me manage the dozens (close to a hundred now) external hard drives that my company (a film production company) has. The task is very simple: I would like the program to scan the file-list/tree of a connected hard drive and keep that information saved. This way we can have a constant list of what's on external hard drives without having to do that manually. The closest I have found to this is a program called jdiskreport, a nice little freeware, but it does not store file names, just down to folder structure, and doesn't have a search functionally. There is also "PrintWindow", but it's a bit dumb, as it basically just outputs a long pdf with everything. Other alternatives, Like Disk Inventory X, WhatSizeMac and GrandPerspetive are all useless to me as they are focused on finding space to be freed up, and not really made to be tools for keeping track of where things are. I cannot believe that such an app does not exist, considering the amount of external hard drives that people have nowadays and the fact that it is generally a mess to keep it all (and the backups!) organized. Any one knows of anything? Thanks!!!
 
I was searching for something similar, though admittedly for a smaller scale. I found these but haven't tried them yet:

http://www.cdfinder.de/index.html

http://macmagna.com/filefinder/index.htm

If you do try one of these I would love to hear your impressions of the app.

Hey rocknblogger, thanks so much for your response, you really put me on the right track. Looking at these two I finally found this group software that do exactly what I need, and that all function in similar ways. I am glad they exist, and i'm surprised they are not more popular... Cdfinder is now called "Neofinder" and seems to be one of the biggest names in this niche. But I first tried Filefinder, though, and i really liked the interface and functionality. As with Neofinder, you can keep the database file wherever you want, which for me is important, as i want to put the data on dropbox so i can access it on many different computers where the external hard drives are often connected. There are all kinds of automation options (such as automatically updating an index when you plug a hard drive that was previously scanned. Filefinder seemed to have some problems with one of the hard drives i testes though, it showed a corrupted data base, and i wonder if that has to do with the amount of files it, or with the fact that it had a time machine backup stored... Well, in any case, Neofinder is up next, and i will chose among them. Both seem like great choices.

Again, thanks!
 
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