Is there such a thing as disk indexing software?

elkinm

Platinum Member
Jun 9, 2001
2,146
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71
Recently a 1 TB hard drive died on me which was not backed up.
It was a storage drive and any important data on it was backed up so I don't care that much that it died.

However, I am upset that I don't know what exactly was lost, so I don't know what I now need to re-backup or re-install or re-download.

I am wondering if there is a disk indexing software, that instead of making a disk backup, would create just a list of files on my system with file names, file size, date modified, ect.

Such that if I loose a drive, I can see what was lost and know what I need to do.

The advantage is that I expect this index to take up nearly no space compared to full backups.

Thanks.
 

cl-scott

ASUS Support
Jul 5, 2012
457
0
0
This has been a default feature of Windows since XP at least, though the kicker is it's not exactly transparent on how to back up that index. You might just want to check into that first.
 

elkinm

Platinum Member
Jun 9, 2001
2,146
0
71
Thanks, wereisit seems perfect, if anything much more complicated than I need. I am trying it right now.
 

slicksilver

Golden Member
Mar 14, 2000
1,571
0
71
Recently a 1 TB hard drive died on me which was not backed up.
It was a storage drive and any important data on it was backed up so I don't care that much that it died.

However, I am upset that I don't know what exactly was lost, so I don't know what I now need to re-backup or re-install or re-download.

I am wondering if there is a disk indexing software, that instead of making a disk backup, would create just a list of files on my system with file names, file size, date modified, ect.

Such that if I loose a drive, I can see what was lost and know what I need to do.

The advantage is that I expect this index to take up nearly no space compared to full backups.

Thanks.

I use Everything from voidtools.com
 

EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
Staff member
Oct 30, 2000
42,591
5
0
Simplest method would be to go to the root directory of each drive and as for a recursive directory lists outputted to a log file using the CMD window;
Printout the log file.
 

elkinm

Platinum Member
Jun 9, 2001
2,146
0
71
Last night I indexed all my drives or about 4 TB of data with Whereisit.
The scanning was much faster when I disabled the plug-ins.
It took just about 30 minutes to scan everything in that configuration, 4-5 times faster than the default settings. Best of all, all the catalogs only use about 40 MB.
I still need to work with it as see if I should use some of the plugins, but it is a great program.

Tonight I will try Everything and TreeSize to see what they have.

Thank you everyone.
 

tynopik

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2004
5,245
500
126
i love Everything, but it really isn't meant for offline cataloging

whereisit is a much better choice