Full HDD directory-tree listing

tinpanalley

Golden Member
Jul 13, 2011
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23
81
Is there any way to see a full directory tree for a hard drive as a jpg or something without having to sit and expand every single folder with subfolders? Right now, I snap several screencaps and paste them into paint but it's tedious.

Thanks!
 
 

Cal166

Diamond Member
May 6, 2000
5,081
8
81
Open a command prompt as administrator

Go to root drive e.g C: \

type
Code:
dir /s >c:\tree.txt

it should output the directory structure in the tree.txt file on your drive. Clean it up and snapshot it.
 
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Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,371
762
126
You can also install Everything. http://www.voidtools.com/
Free, fast lookup of all your files on all your drives.
Type in *.jpg in the search box, and it will find all your jpg files and so on.

Pretty nice.
 

Mike64

Platinum Member
Apr 22, 2011
2,108
101
91
Is there any way to see a full directory tree for a hard drive as a jpg or something without having to sit and expand every single folder with subfolders? Right now, I snap several screencaps and paste them into paint but it's tedious.

Thanks!
I read this to mean you want to see the directory listing/"tree" outputted to a JPG, not that you want to search for JPGs. Is that correct? If so, what you're asking for isn't realistic, is it? Assuming you have anything like a normal number of directories/files on the HD, you'd never be able to read text shrunk small enough to fit into a rational-sized JPG, and once your scrolling in 2 directions to see the whole JPG (if it's big enough to read), you might as well just be viewing a report in a normal window, no?

Anyway, I'm not sure if this what you're asking for, but the utility "TreeSize Free" will let you expand its reports to various "levels" (including "full") and scroll through them without having to click on each branch in the tree. There is also a "print report" menu entry, which presumably would let you output to a PDF using a virtual PDF-printer, but printing functionality of any sort seems to be available only in the paid versions, not the free one.:(
 
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Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,371
762
126
I read this to mean you want to see the directory listing/"tree" outputted to a JPG, not that you want to search for JPGs. Is that correct?

Huh, missed that... that is a really odd way to do it.
No idea if OP will ever respond on what they meant.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,204
13,591
126
www.anyf.ca
There's also a command called "tree" if you don't want to rely on 3rd party software. Bonus: it makes you look like a hacker. Set font to green for best effects. :D

If you want it to go to a jpg, you could probably use C++ to run the command and output to text file, then parse the text file and generate a PNG or BMP. JPG is a bit harder to do but you could look into that too. Personally I tend to go PNG for that stuff as it's an easier format to work with. I wrote my own wrapper class around libpng which makes it super easy to use.
 

Mike64

Platinum Member
Apr 22, 2011
2,108
101
91
Huh, missed that... that is a really odd way to do it.
No idea if OP will ever respond on what they meant.
Since the OP mentioned screenshots, I figured he was thinking that outputting to a JPG would just be a way of consolidating multiple pages of a "tree-shaped" report into a single "document", so to speak... As for responding, there's a pretty big time-zone difference between the US and France, so I'm assuming that's getting in the way...
 

Bardock

Senior member
Mar 12, 2014
346
39
91
Treesize is what I use. It goes into the right click menu so you can click any drive or anywhere in the tree and get a tree with folder sizes. Very handy when running out of space.
 

tinpanalley

Golden Member
Jul 13, 2011
1,501
23
81
I read this to mean you want to see the directory listing/"tree" outputted to a JPG, not that you want to search for JPGs. Is that correct?
That's exactly what I meant.
If so, what you're asking for isn't realistic, is it? Assuming you have anything like a normal number of directories/files on the HD, you'd never be able to read text shrunk small enough to fit into a rational-sized JPG, and once your scrolling in 2 directions to see the whole JPG (if it's big enough to read), you might as well just be viewing a report in a normal window, no?
Of course it's not realistic but I didn't know how else to describe it. That being said, when I said "full directory tree" I never said it was of a massive 80TB network server. It's to take a snapshot of maybe 200-300GB of videos in several folders/subfolders.

Here's what I need it for....
Every 6 months or so, I send my parents a HDD with several GB of videos and music and they send it back after copying it to their own HDD. USUALLY I take a quick screencap with all the folders expanded, they always fit on one screen of Explorer. That way, in 6 months I have an image of what I've given them already and what I haven't. This last time I forgot. I need to give my dad some program that he can quickly do this with to avoid showing him how to expand all the folders on his HDD and screencap jpgs.
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,371
762
126
Here's what I need it for....
Every 6 months or so, I send my parents a HDD with several GB of videos and music and they send it back after copying it to their own HDD. USUALLY I take a quick screencap with all the folders expanded, they always fit on one screen of Explorer. That way, in 6 months I have an image of what I've given them already and what I haven't. This last time I forgot. I need to give my dad some program that he can quickly do this with to avoid showing him how to expand all the folders on his HDD and screencap jpgs.

Basically, you want to keep track of everything you send them.
Not sure why outputting to jpg is required though?

I would open powershell, and do something like Get-ChildItem | tree > myfiles.txt and they can send you the myfiles.txt file.
If you don't like that, then you can get http://www.thumbnailme.com/ (free) and have them run that, and it will generate a thumbnail of all the images/movies you want, and they can send you the proof sheet (which is a image).
 

tinpanalley

Golden Member
Jul 13, 2011
1,501
23
81
Basically, you want to keep track of everything you send them.
Not sure why outputting to jpg is required though?
It's not! I just don't know how else to do it. It was just an example to give you an idea of what I need.