 sj |
||
|
||
Tech: Searchable Disk Directories?
|
|
|
|||||||
|
Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? |
Share Thread
|
||||||
|
Subject: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: GUEST,petr Date: 26 May 06 - 04:26 PM Im looking for a relatively easy way to search disk directories. We are a printshop and we have our graphic files backed up on close to a 100 cds (going back 8 years) Just to explain, the files that we back up are jobs that are done over a given period - roughly every 2 months or so. They are not categorized by type or customer, it is simply a backup of jobs done at a given time. (In general we dont need to search the system too often, the commonly used customer logos etc are already on the hard disk. And most of the work that is done usually newly created or customer supplied. But once in a while if we need to retrieve something, we can look up on the invoicing system when the last order was done, and glance through the directory binder to find the disk and given file.) It would be faster though to have the computer do the search. My question is whether there is a simple way to dump the directories of all the disks in a big text file and search that. Any suggestions? |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: GUEST,petr Date: 26 May 06 - 04:33 PM I should also add, this is all done on a Mac system OS10. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: Bill D Date: 26 May 06 - 04:39 PM yes indeed! Agent Ransack does exactly that. "Agent Ransack is a free tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently. When searching the contents of files Agent Ransack displays the text found so you can quickly browse the results without having to separately open each file! Agent Ransack provides compelling advantages over similar search tools: Regular expressions that allow complex rule based searches. Immediate contents results view. Various wizards to walk the user through the searching process." or, there is also File Invader, which seems to be nice, though perhaps not as fancy as Agent Ransack. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: Bill D Date: 26 May 06 - 04:40 PM ooops! You gotta say Mac..*grin* |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: JohnInKansas Date: 26 May 06 - 06:11 PM Bill D. I don't read the request as how to search a hard drive, but how to compile an index of a (large) collection of CDs. On my Windows setup, I use the (DOS) DIR command to write the CD directory to a file on the hard drive. If desired, multiple directories can then be combined into a single document, and Word can search fairly efficiently for text in the document. In Windows, you'd click Start|Run. In the run box type "Command" (without the quotes) and hit enter. That opens the "familiar DOS window." I find it easiest to navigate to the folder where I want the index file(s) to be, and then assuming your CD drive is E:\, type: DIR E:\*.*/S>CD001.txt Hit enter, and the file named CD001.txt appears in the folder where you were when you gave the command, and contains the list of all files on the CD that was in Drive E:\. If you insert the next CD, and hit F3, it should dump the keyboard buffer so that the command reappears, and you can "arrow over" and replace the 1 with a 2, hit enter and get CD002.txt, etc. Keep going until you have a file for each of the CDs. When finished, type "Exit" and hit enter to close the Command (DOS) window. I recall vaguely that Mac has a command line "list files" method, probably similar to the DOS one, but can't give details. Basics: DIR - - lists the files in the current directory. DIR E:\ - - lists files at E:\, which is assumed to be the CD drive. The "wild card" *.* - - says list all the files The /s switch - - says list subfolders The "redirect" > - - says send the result somewhere instead of displaying it: The filename CD001.txt - - says where to send it. Once you have the .txt files, you may want to open them in Word where you can use Edit|Replace and "replace all" to strip off everything except the filenames, or you may prefer to leave dates and filesizes for identification purposes. In the .txt file for the first CD, Find "^p" and replace with "^tCD001^p" (again, without the quotes) will find each paragraph end marker (^p), insert a tab (^t), the CD name (CD001) and replace the paragraph marker (^p) at the end of each paragraph (assumed here to be a line with a single filename) so that if you decide to put a few hundred CD listings all in one document you'll be able to tell easily which CD contains the file you find when you do a Ctl-F (Find) to locate a file. Repeat for each of the text files, so that each filename that's listed "knows" which CD it belongs to. Once you've added the CD label to each file in each of the .txt docs (saved back as .doc, preferably) you can past many of them all into one .doc Word file, and if you like, use Table|Sort to put them in alphabetical order by filename. Depending on how much RAM you have, I've found that about 300 pages will sort easily, but that depends somewhat on how good your machinery is. One of my index documents, listing about 60 CDs and 10 DVDs, runs 1,667 pages, 9,365 KB, but is a little larger than a plain vanilla list because of hyperlinks to each CD and a few other "active indexing" items. Word will find the first instance of any word (filename) searched (Ctl-F) in less than a second. Note that the "theoretical maximum" Word file size is 32 MB (Windows or Mac), but I've run a few up to around 89 MB without crashing, although it does slow things down a bit. Around 2 MB should be good for 300 pages or more, for this simple a file. If you'd prefer a more "elegant" solution, there are programs available intended for indexing all your photos, and some of them allow you to add stuff from "removable media" to the indexes they make. I've never felt the need, so I don't know one to recommend; but perhaps someone else has a favorite. John |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 26 May 06 - 07:40 PM Hmmm, the last time I bothered with this sort of thing, I was playing with files on 5 inch floppies... :-) |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: Bill D Date: 26 May 06 - 07:53 PM well, John....I see what you mean *smile*, but it takes some analysis to ferret out that concept for those of us who dash in on a break. Had I read closer BEFORE he noted it was for Mac, I would have recommended a couple of programs specifically for cataloguing disks and keeping even off-line programs/files listed by a user-defined system....I think one is called "Catfish". anyway, I have no help for Macs.. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: wysiwyg Date: 26 May 06 - 08:22 PM I use Karen's Directory Printer for a list of filenames on anything I archive to CD. I use Window's Explorer searches to find what I need. I use a dating code in text doc filenames so if I forget what smart name I gave something, I can at least refer to my desk calendar to see WHEN I was working on a project, and bring up filenames for that time period. For songs, the rest of the filename is the song title and the source where I got it. So no matter how dumb a day I'm having, I can usually find things surprisingly quickly. ~Susan |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: IvanB Date: 26 May 06 - 10:05 PM I use a small free program called Cathy. It consists of a 58K executable file placed in a directory of your choice. It catalogs quickly and efficiently, although it makes a separate index file for each disk catalogued, usually about 1K. I have a few hundred CD's catalogued and, so far, the searches are almost instantaneous. Unfortunately it's also a Windows program, which does nothing to answer the initial request. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: Bill D Date: 26 May 06 - 10:21 PM Right, Ivan! I remember Cathy...good program. and, yes Susan...Karenware has been famous for years now. She produces some elegant little helper programs. Thanks for the reminder |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: GUEST,Jon Date: 27 May 06 - 05:46 AM I can't see dir listed on this page but ls is there. Using John's example: ls -R Should get you a list of all file names. As with Windows, you can redirect stdout to a file using >. See the ls documentation for more options with ls. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 27 May 06 - 07:31 AM "As with Windows, you can redirect stdout" ROFL... as a UNIX purist I say hahahahaha! :-0 |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: GUEST,Jon Date: 27 May 06 - 08:13 AM Well I think they do call it that on Win console apps/DOS... ;-) |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 27 May 06 - 08:20 AM Oh, yeah, and just where did Bill pinch THAT from, eh? ;-) |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: JohnInKansas Date: 27 May 06 - 01:10 PM I've encountered users of various OS who implied somewhat different meanings for "list," hence I'd be uncertain whether ls or l would give just the filenames that I assume would be what is wanted; but I think the concept is right. If you can show the names of the files in a list, and then redirect that to a text file rather than to stdout (the monitor) you've got what what you need to make a file consisting of all the filenames on each CD. The "ls" description says "information about files" which may be what you want, or may include more or less than what you want here. A quick trial should tell you if it's the applicable form. (And there may be additional "switches" you can use to get different forms of output to the text files.) 1. Display all the filenames, with or without other info like createdate, editdate, filesize, etc. 2. For each CD, redirect that display to a text file (using a different filename for each CD, of course). 3. For the file associated with each CD, add a "CD name" to each filename so that when you mix information for all the CDs into a single document you'll have that information on a file-by-file basis. 4. Combine files for any number of CDs into one Word document, so you can use Word's Edit|Find utility to look for the file(s) you want. I believe the Edit|Replace utility in Word is virtually identical in Word versions for Mac and Windows, and it is very powerful once you get some of the basics, so even if the list of files that you get isn't exactly what you want, you can remove bits that aren't needed, as long as all the info you want is present in the first listing of the files. John |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: GUEST,petr Date: 27 May 06 - 01:44 PM thanks for all your help. JohninKansas is correct I just want an easily searchable index. I will look into some of those options. Thanks again for all your suggestions. Peter |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: GUEST,Jon Date: 27 May 06 - 02:53 PM You probably wouldn't even need one lage text/word file with OSX. You could try grep |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: JohnInKansas Date: 27 May 06 - 05:20 PM Jon - Don't the files that grep compares have to be on the machine that's doing the comparison? The problem here is to have a list of the content that's on a bunch of CDs when the CDs are NOT accessible to the computer, in order to find which CD needs to be mounted to retrieve a file. I casually overlooked that the commands on the OS-X sheet you linked have links to additional explanation, but I'm afraid it didn't help me much. Both "l" and "ls" go to the same web page where switches/variants are shown; but I presume one must have the appropriate vocabulary to fully understand the explanations. The example, that ls lists content of "the current folder" may not get content in subfolders, but of course perhaps the language means something a bit different than I'm accustomed to. I suspect it's actually a lot simpler than it looks. John |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 27 May 06 - 05:51 PM "I suspect it's actually a lot simpler than it looks." Ah, John, as life has taught me, that's only if you know what you are doing... :-) |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: GUEST,Jon Date: 27 May 06 - 06:39 PM Yes John, What I was thinking was you could make up a bunch of text files using the "dir >cdxxx.txt" method but could perhaps use grep to search these individual files rather than needing to make one big text file. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: JohnInKansas Date: 27 May 06 - 08:07 PM Theoretically, in Windows, you could put a bunch of files in a folder and just use Windows Explorer to search for text in the files. If the text that the files contained was just the list of files on the CDs it would do a fair job. Searching in Word, within one document, seems much faster, but that may be partly because I've got so many files in most of my folders that it makes the WinExplorer search look slow. (And I usually use that search mode when I've "lost" the folder, rather than within known locations, so it's usually a search of all 800,000+ data files on the drive.) With a hundred or so files, one for each CD, isolated so you could search only the folder where those files are it might be reasonably quick. This assumes, of course, a recent Win version. Win2K and WinXP both allow "find in files" searches, but I don't recall whether older ones like Win98 have that feature. Obviously I don't know what similar search capabilities Macs have. And Robin - "only if you know what you're doing?." I suppose we should assume that somebody who uses a Mac knows how to drive it, even if I/we don't - or at least we should be polite and pretend that we believe... ... (For some reason it always comes out sounding strange when I try to be polite on purpose.) John |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Searchable Disk Directories? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 28 May 06 - 07:16 AM Win98 and earlier had Find options of 1) file name 2) look in file John, at my age, I still stand by my comment about anything - including music - "Easy - only if you know what you are doing... !!!" |
| Share Thread: |