Finding stuff...

[alexpgp]

Boris R. gave me pretty rousing endorsement of the Google Desktop Search application, and after digging around on the 'net to learn more about it, I decided to install it on my VAIO. It's actually pretty neat, and beats the Sleuthhound Pro software pretty decisively. This is a good thing, as I hadn't really kept the Sleuthhound databases up to date and the software itself had some quirks that I had come to detest over time.

One of the things GDS doesn't do is search things like memory cards, and I can see why the folks at Google drew that line in the sand, but on the other hand, I've got a 1-GB memory stick and a 2-GB PCMCIA memory card more or less permanently installed in my VAIO, and I actually use them to store Files That Must Not Die™, so not being able to have them included in the GDS database is a little disappointing.

Of course, someone has come up with a plugin to solve the issue (and if I dig even harder, there are probably several solutions out there). However, before cataloging removable media, it makes sense to have a way of keeping track of said media. (Think of it this way: How does one get around the problem of cataloging the stuff on a USB flash drive mounted as drive H: if it's possible some other USB drive - or an iPod, or camera, or whatever - will get mounted as drive H: at some other time?)

I've played around with something called Datacatch, which seems to do the job. The free trial version sort of spooked me at first, because when it displays your removable media in a very Windows-like directory window, it shows each such item individually along with the total size of files on the volume. Clicking on the icon makes it look as if you're browsing the volume.

The only difference is that the initial icon one clicks on represents a catalog of the data, not the data itself. (But for a moment, there, it seemed to me that all the program was doing was copying files from media into one central location, which isn't the solution I was looking for.)

The next step - assuming I want to shell out money for Datacatch - would be to install a plugin that creates a link between the Librarian (the Datacatch program) and GDS. That is something I'll have to think about.

Cheers...

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

There's also Copernic desktop search. It indexes everything. I forget whether or not it does external drives, but it seems to me it can. I gave it up because I mostly wanted to search for filenames, but it searches for content, which might be more useful to you. It's very fast, in any case.