Many of us have 3-5 backups of our stuff on various hard drives , many of us also have 2-3 or more computers, and many times its good to have a handy list of what files are on what pc or if that old project folder is also backuped on our backup drives.

I have tried all sorts of programs for this like Beyond Compare (it is good for on the fly comparing of two folders though) or Directory Lister but they all got messed up when dealing with folders containing thousands of files and subfolders, most of the times the html they produced would open with errors and missing files

Snap2HTML is the best Directory Lister i have come to use , its one of the fastest (it creates the list in a few seconds), it produces the list in a cool clickable explorer-like template which you can change its looks if you want to and is also 100% free.
http://www.rlvision.com/snap2html/about.asp

Here is what the default list looks like





A usefull tip for whoever doesnt know is to compress the .html produced if you are going to keep it for later browsing or comparing (for example in your backup drives content list folder) using either 7zip or winrar (ultimate/best compression options). For example the html above was a 35megabyte html file which i then compressed to a 2.4mb 7zip file to keep. Here is one of my samples html list , the one in the pics above ,if you wanna checkout how cool the folder clicking and browsing is
http://www93.zippyshare.com/v/WIaGrIdV/file.html
(Snap2HTML.E.Drive.Samplez.(Including.Hidden.&.Sys.Files).7z)

This is what the app looks like , really simple and fast (if you want the complete folders contents listed just keep Include Hidden/System Items boxes ticked) (You can tick Link Files Enable so when you click on a file or folder in the html list explorer opens up its location for you - like ms search - open folder/file location)




Hope this information comes in useful for some of you. I wish i knew of this program some years ago. The times i have installed backup hdd drives in pc &used external hdd cases to check out and compare all them backup drives one by one was just too much , other apps arent as efficient and trustworthy as Snap2HTML ,BeyondCompare is decent for on the fly compare of two hard drives but it lacks in list creation.As for NAS drives and keeping backup drives always on power and warm is something i avoid.
Good luck with your directory listings ;p

 

what's wrong with

Code:

dir > nameyourfile.txt

?

 

Nice app, mate. Thanks

@fraifikmushi
Test Snap2Htmp... is better than you think.

 

Good to know its helpful man

as for the "dir > nameyourfile.txt" browsing through a large txt with thousands of chars is really tiring on the eyes man, not to mention the mess that the .txt becomes when you are dealing with large folders full of hundreds of subfolders etc etc.

 

No, you don't browse, you search!
I use a regex-based search tool that allows for a multiple substrings search to quickly find what I'm looking for, but this is probably not for the typical musician
In fact it is:

dir /b/s [drive1]:\[path-of-your-stuff] >file1.txt
dir /b/s [drive2]:\[path-of-your-stuff] >file2.txt
etc.

Under Windows, I can recommend Agent Ransack because It can also search multiple txt files and not only show which ones matched, but when clicking on one text file, also shows which lines in the file match.

On a Mac, you would:
find [drive1-mountpoint]:\[path-of-your-stuff] >file1.txt

and search using gnu grep:
grep -ioH [searchstring] *txt

(I disabled spotlight to save space, performance and my SSD from unnecessary wear)

 

Last edited: Nov 7, 2016

I do "dir /b > files.txt". Works great for me.

EDIT: To be more specific, I shift+right click and open a command prompt in the directory I want before I use the "dir" command.