Total Commander,i will try it on my computer.

 

That's great,thank you so much.

 

https://explorerplusplus.com/
Freeware, small, portable.
Daft Punk could make a song on it.

 

Double Commander it's a Norton Commander clone, and is free.


https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 15, 2019

I don't know why everyone is bashing against the windows explorer. I'm using it since I use windows and I like it
quite a lot. With some modifications like "Classic Shell" and "Old New Explorer", it's really enjoyable.

The only shit there is the integrated search function which takes ages to find files. For that purpose I use
my own modified version of Everything from VoidSoft since years. If indexes all your disks and finds files
immediately in less than a second.

 

For me, the best is Unreal Commander.
https://x-diesel.com/

 

A very helpful post for computer users,share what i know.
Notepad++
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/download/v7.7.1.html
LibreOffice
Microsoft Office Online
Winpwd
https://www.winpwd.com/
TotalCommander
Snapchat
https://www.snapchat.com/download
DVD Styler

 

Last edited: Aug 19, 2019

Total commander from 1996 to today

 

In the same spirit as the NirSoft Tools recommendations. i.e., genuinely useful utilities that are tiny and require no installation.
2 nice examples here.

Same basic idea but with more options and using a convenient graphical interface instead of command line.
Save or print out directories and subdirectories of files. Information can include the file's size, date and time of last modification, etc. Sort the list of files by name, size, date created, etc. Save the format of the list to txt, html, csv and more.
http://www.aplusfreeware.com/categories/util/files/ls.zip

Bulk Rename Utility allows you to easily rename files and entire folders based upon extremely flexible criteria. Add date/time stamps, replace numbers, insert text, convert case, add auto-numbers, process folders and sub-folders, etc
https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk

 

ls.zip:
That's very different. It's a neat little utility but it won't let me search for files on drives not attached to the machine, and amongst almost all the freeware tools that can search for strings in multiple files, almost none shows the search result in context. Most only show the matching file names which doesn't help.
Ransack is a rare exception.
Apart from that, what ls.exe and bulkrenameutility do is already covered by the stock version of Total Commander.

 

Do you know of a hack to create and make Everything search indexes of offline disks?
I'm using it too and I can only see mounted NTFS drives, no ExFAT either.

 

I like your approach of having info available about all drives (connected or disconnected)
I think that idea is more important than which tools get used to achieve it.

When I mentioned LS, I was referring only to the first half of your approach, (what you called "build your own HDD index")
LS doesn't offer any search facilities at all; it's not even trying to do the follow up Ransack / File locator part of that approach.

So, I was just suggesting that LS is a useful alternative to the command line you use to build your information
[dir /b /s <hdd letter>:\ >hdd-name.txt]

For building 'some kind of' HDD index, LS is really neat. It exports the directory/files information as txt, or html, or csv.
With csv, it means the info about contents of drives is available as spreadsheets, with all the obvious flexibility that spreadsheets enable. (and that's entirely in line with what you suggest about accessing info about disconnected drives, which I agree is well worth doing)

Spreadsheets versus Ransack - a whole other discussion - I'm agnostic

I agree that Total Commander can do the bulk renaming, but the bulkrenameutility is still a neat stand alone utility for anyone that may not be interested in Total Commander. It works alongside Windows Explorer just fine.

I can't see how Total Commander replaces LS though, I can't see how it can 'export info to csv' as easily as LS (if at all)

I don't really see any of these tools as competing; they all have their uses.

 

I've been trying to find a usable and fast solution for years.
There are many solutions available but I had a hard time finding something that suited my needs.
What I was looking for:
- Should be free and work on both Win and Mac
- Should support regular expressions and multiple search strings (to search for specific file types etc)
- The offline drive database should not be insanely large (i.e. no content indexing required)
- It should be easy to update the database

Using my above approach works just as well on a Mac (find <drive path> >indexfile.txt and an alias or batch file to let me search over all files with a single command) and gives me all results after only a few seconds, with the matching strings marked red and the drive name at the beginning of the line. Opening the command line is not as pretty but it does not take any longer than opening a GUI application and you'd have to enter the search string on the GUI as well.

I'm not saying the tools are bad, they are really well done, it's just don't like a huge number of tools when there's one that can do it almost all.

PS: To create index files, in Total Commander you would use the DiskDir/DiskDir Extended plugin that does exactly that, but like said, I don't need to anymore.

 

Been using Windows Explorer and its Quick Access features to sort/manage VSTs, Sample Packs and stuffs. Also had it using custom icon for each folder, just to make it look nice on Quick Access navigation tab. (like VST folder, I convert its logo to icon format - convertico.com). Had to use Advance Renamer if need to convert file/folder name in bulks.

Explorer++ looks nice there.

 

Good stuff - thanks. A pleasure to see details of this idea fleshed out.

I hadn't realised you were also applying this to Mac disks.
And of course your (find <drive path> >indexfile.txt) command line approach could also give me csv files
(to satisfy my biased preference for storing this info in spreadsheets)

If anyone else on a Mac was going down a similar road and still wanted a GUI to help
they could check out this app - File List Export https://apps.apple.com/us/app/file-list-export/id852692251?mt=12

 

You're welcome!
EasyFind from devon-technologies.com is a great free local file searcher btw, but I admit that being Mac-only, it's off-topic here

 

As i know EasyFind supports only Mac,but it does work well,i hope more and better software will be shared here.

 

I forgot to mention Windirstat. While not a full file manager, it's useful to find clutters. there is also a Linux and Mac version.
https://windirstat.net/

 

Thunar

 

I don't have any problems with Windows explorer. I am really fine with it and it works great for me. The overview is nice and I can easily find where I am looking for. I don't really see why almost everyone here is using something different. Can anyone explain?