Catalog/Index Removable Media

[maynard]

I've been looking for a program to catalog all my data archived on CD/DVD. Mostly doc and compressed doc files (pdf,doc,txt,html,mht,chm etc.). There is no end to the number of prgrams out there that will do this. The only problem is that NONE of them indexes the file content. They all "index" the file system but all that means is that they've stored file info and whatever metadata they can extract.

Of these non-indexing prgrams, some are actually quite nice at what they do (WhereIsIt, Advanced File Organizer...) And there actually is one program I found (Deductus) that DOES index data but it's 3 years old and sufficiently quirky and unreliable to make it a scary proposition.

Anyway... after hitting a brick wall I began thinking that UR would be perfect for this application. Everything is there except the ability to store, manage and browse multiple catalogs for offline media. Also, cataloging and indexing archive file contents (zip, rar etc.) for virtual browsing and searching would be a major plus.

Thoghts please. It this is do-able now please make my day.

Maynard

[kinook]

You should be able to use UR for that. UR can index the content of those formats (except .rar). I guess you could create a .urd file for each offline source, and either annotate the location of the offline data within each db, or create a master db as a catalog of all offline sources which links to the indexed .urd for each source.

[kevina]

One note: for the unsupported .rar (actually any compressed format), it might work better to extract the file to some location, then import the extracted hierarchy into Ultra Recall. Since UR stores the data compressed, only adding it's own metadata (keyword, attributes, linkage between items), you retain the compressed file efficiency, but gain organization and ease of searching and annotation. If the data truly is static then you could burn the resulting urd file(s) back to CD for archival. Just another thought...

[maynard]

Sorry for the delayed response on this one. I wanted to setup a decent test case.

I created a db and added a Category and Volume item template. Each imported CD/DVD's would be a Volume item residing under a specific category (Music, Data, Archives etc.)

I imported a 4GB DVD and it took a long time (~4 hours). BUt the time was well spent. The content was indexed as expected and now I'm able to text search that DVD without it being in the drive. No other program I know of can do this.

However, there are problems. With my internal browser file mask set to:
html;.htm;.mht;.ico;.xls;.doc;.dot;.ppt;.pdf;*fold er";.zip. Any file in this list I touch in UR generates a file not found error. Removing the mask fixes the problem, but since these setttings are global, it's not a viable solution. Also, with the CD/DVD in the drive, I can't see the content which defeats the purpose as I'd like to drill down into zip files.

Thoughts:
- Make the Volume item type intelligent so that an inserted disk is treated normally and a missing disk is only browsed locally in UR by metadata.
- Make the file missing error optional and intelligent based on the above.
- Display an enhanced item attribute set in the item viewer pane if the disk is not inserted.
-- Thumbnails for images
-- Partial document text
-- Partial text from the keyword index
-- File list of zip contents
-- Music file/Video file tags
-- etc.
- Add RAR support (please... I'm begging now. I have no pride.)

kevina quote:
it might work better to extract the file to some location, then import the extracted hierarchy into Ultra Recall.

This would work for new files, but I have a library of previoulsy archived disks that would make extracting for indexing purposes untenable.

Thanks Guys. Your open minds and support here are appreciated.