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How to catalogue an external hard drive and search it after you unplug it

You have a drive in a drawer. You know a file is on it — or on one of the other drives in the drawer — but finding it means plugging each one in and looking. This guide makes that a one-time job: catalogue each drive once, and search all of them, plugged in or not, from one search box.

ArchiveMind runs on macOS and Windows, catalogues on your own computer, and makes no network connections. The catalogue it builds is a file on your disk.

Before you start

  • A catalogue is not a backup. ArchiveMind records what is on the drive — names, paths, dates, sizes, the text inside documents, thumbnails — not the files themselves. If the drive dies, the catalogue can tell you what you lost; it cannot bring it back.
  • Nothing on the drive is changed. ArchiveMind only reads. It never moves, renames or edits your files.
  • Give it time on the first pass. A drive full of photos and documents takes a while to read; a 2 TB drive is hours, not minutes. You can search what has been found while the scan continues.

Steps

  1. Plug the drive in and let your computer mount it.
  2. Open ArchiveMind. On the Scan tab, click Browse… and pick the drive itself (the top level), or a folder on it if you only want part. On the very first launch this is the Start first scan screen instead; same idea.
  3. Click Start Scan. The status line shows files found, files checked and files indexed as it goes.
  4. When it says the scan is complete, try a search for something you know is on the drive. Every result names its source drive.
  5. Eject the drive. Search again — the results are still there, now labelled Offline, and each one still shows which drive it is on.

Repeat for each drive. Give drives distinct names before you start ("Photos 2015–2018", "Client work") — the name is how results tell you which one to fetch from the drawer.

What you can do with the drive unplugged

Search by name, by the words inside documents, by what is in photos and by faces; see thumbnails and details; see which copies of a file exist on which drives. ArchiveMind labels every result from an unplugged drive and says plainly that the file will open again once the drive returns.

What it cannot do

  • Open the file. The original bytes are on the drive; without the drive, there is nothing to open. ArchiveMind says so instead of pretending.
  • Notice changes made elsewhere. If you add or delete files on the drive using another computer, the catalogue does not know until you scan that drive again. Scanning again is quick: unchanged files are skipped.
  • Read a drive your computer cannot mount. If macOS or Windows cannot show the drive in Finder or File Explorer, ArchiveMind cannot read it either. On a Mac, a drive that was once a Time Machine destination needs Full Disk Access — see Permission denied for an external drive.

See also