[0wen01]

Hi,

I have several hundred CDs containing tons of back-up data. That information is locked up on them. How can I search out data on these discs please?

The only way I can think is to copy each disc manually to an external hard drive, then search that for keywords? Would take a long time to manually open and duplicate each disc though :-|

Any other ideas please?

Thanks,

Owen

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[SpywareDr]

A HIT-Storage Optical Jukebox and Library System HMS 3560 has 560 media slots (Blu-Ray, DVD, CD).

[0wen01]

Thanks

There's this too cd_juke

but at what cost though?

:-o

[Ztruker]

Other than searching each disc individually, I don't see any other methods than what has already been discussed.
Do you need to search content or files or just file names? If just names, you would still have to mount each disc but you could do something like this:

If optical drive is D:

Take a disc
Assign a number to it
Insert the disc
from a Command Prompt, do a dir d: /s > Disc###.txt

repeat for the other 199 discs. That would give you one file on your hard drive for each disc that contains the names of all the files and folders on that disc along with the date and time the files were created.

Alternatively, you could do this:

echo Disc### >> AllDIscs.txt
dir d: /s >> AllDiscs.txt

repeat for each disc.

That would gove you a single file called AllDiscs.txt with the following format

Disc1
list of Disc2 contents
Disc2
list of Disc2 contents
etc. etc.

[0wen01]

Thanks, so

dir d: /s > Disc###.txt

will list all the contents of a CD or DVD please?


Prior to this I loaded a disc then printed out a screen-shot of the contents.

[SpywareDr]

The command:

dir d:\ /a /s > Disc0001.txt

will create a list of all of the files and folders that are on the disc in drive D: and put that list into a file named "Disc0001.txt" in your current folder (directory).

[Ztruker]

If you use >> instead of > then it will append to the existing file. Use this as I showed if you want to create a single file with all the info in it.

>dir /?
Displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory.

DIR [drive:][path][filename] [/A[[:]attributes]] [/B] [/C] [/D] [/L] [/N]
  [/O[[:]sortorder]] [/P] [/Q] [/R] [/S] [/T[[:]timefield]] [/W] [/X] [/4]

  [drive:][path][filename]
              Specifies drive, directory, and/or files to list.

  /A          Displays files with specified attributes.
  attributes   D  Directories                R  Read-only files
               H  Hidden files               A  Files ready for archiving
               S  System files               I  Not content indexed files
               L  Reparse Points             -  Prefix meaning not
  /B          Uses bare format (no heading information or summary).
  /C          Display the thousand separator in file sizes.  This is the
              default.  Use /-C to disable display of separator.
  /D          Same as wide but files are list sorted by column.
  /L          Uses lowercase.
  /N          New long list format where filenames are on the far right.
  /O          List by files in sorted order.
  sortorder    N  By name (alphabetic)       S  By size (smallest first)
               E  By extension (alphabetic)  D  By date/time (oldest first)
               G  Group directories first    -  Prefix to reverse order
  /P          Pauses after each screenful of information.
  /Q          Display the owner of the file.
  /R          Display alternate data streams of the file.
  /S          Displays files in specified directory and all subdirectories.
  /T          Controls which time field displayed or used for sorting
  timefield   C  Creation
              A  Last Access
              W  Last Written
  /W          Uses wide list format.
  /X          This displays the short names generated for non-8dot3 file
              names.  The format is that of /N with the short name inserted
              before the long name. If no short name is present, blanks are
              displayed in its place.
  /4          Displays four-digit years

Switches may be preset in the DIRCMD environment variable.  Override
preset switches by prefixing any switch with - (hyphen)--for example, /-W.

[0wen01]

Cool,

so what is the advantage of using >> instead of > please?

does the double chevron get you more information on the text file?

many thanks

[SpywareDr]

> = create or overwrite if already exists

>> = create or append if already exists

[Ztruker]

As I said:

If you use >> instead of > then it will append to the existing file. Use this as I showed if you want to create a single file with all the info in it.