Here ’s a little tip to help you keep caterpillar track of all those backup CDs and videodisk you ’re burning . ( Youaremaking unconstipated backups , ripe ? ) . If you ’ve got a full - bore backup scheme endure , you ’re in all likelihood simulate most of your data to another hard drive ( or perhaps to mag tape ) , and not to standard candle / DVD media — at only 700 Mbit or 4.3 GB , cadmium and DVDs are not the most efficient storage solutions for today ’s gargantuan strong drives .
However , you may still find compact disc and videodisk to be virtual for make backup of little critical data files — thing such as Word and Excel documents , photo , financial records , music collections grouped by artist or CD , and so forth . In my case , I practice DVDs to back up my iPhoto library , and CDs for our Quicken records and somemacosxhints.com - related files ( in addition to regularly backing everything up to two external hard drives ) .
One of the challenges with backing stuff up to CD or videodisk is remembering what files are on which CD or DVD . There are third - company apps that will catalogue your datum for you , of course , but if you ’re lam osmium X 10.4 , you may do a reasonably good problem of it yourself using Spotlight .
set about by create a directory for your CD and videodisk index somewhere in your exploiter ’s folder . For intent of this article , we ’ll bear it ’s namedMedia Index , and located in your user ’s Documents folder .
What to do
First , burn your CD or DVD as usual . But before you eject it , overt Terminal ( in /Applications - > Utilities ) and enter these commands , pressing Return after each :
These two commands first change to the Volumes directory ( thecd ) and then heel ( thels ) the names of all the store medium ( hard drive , compact disc , DVDs ) on your machine . You should see an entrance for the CD or DVD you just created — get ’s assume it ’s advert 2005 iPhoto archive . Now typecast this command in Terminal :
evidently , replace the text inside the inverted comma with the name of your burn disc . We ’ve now locomote into the directory on your actual burned disk . Now we ’re start to separate Terminal to catalogue every individual item on that disc , and save that information into a single file . There are two interchangeable commands you could use to do this . The first version below will produce a file that looks like this :
The second version produces a longer entry with more detail :
The second version , which apparently results in much wider argument , contains selective information on every single file ’s permission , proprietor ( the firstuserin the above example ) , group ( the seconduser ) , size ( 340 ) , modification date , and then the file ’s name and way . Which version you apply is completely up to you .
The curt version :
The farseeing interlingual rendition :
In both commands , replacename_of_cd_or_dvd.txtwith the actual name of the CD or DVD , as seen when you did thelsin the Volumes directory . The first part of this command merely finds every file at or below the currently chosen folder . ( The long version adds - ls , which is what give the elaborated directory listing . Advanced Unix users can usecutto restraint which columns of output nose up in the last file . )
The yield from these commands would normally go to the Terminal ’s screen , but the greater - than sign redirects the output to the file listed to the right wing . When the command finishes run , your indicator single file has been create . you may swear this in the Finder by just opening your Media Index folder .
So now what
Now you ’ve got an indicator of every file on the CD or DVD you just burned . If you ’re ever in need of a file you burned to a phonograph record , you just require to call back part of its name — function a Spotlight ( Command - Space ) lookup for that name , and one of the compeer will be the “ real ” file on your hard drive . Another match , however , will be the entry for that file in one of the exponent filing cabinet in your Media Index brochure . merely seeing the index finger file ’s name in the Spotlight results list will secern you exactly which CD or videodisc you need to set down into your machine .
So there you have it : a homemade , fast , and completely free indexing organization for your backup spiritualist .
Note : As I mentioned in Thursday ’s soupcon , I ’m on theMacMania 5 sail — look for despatch from me and Dan Frakes next workweek in the MacMania web log . Since I ’ll be bobbing around the Western Caribbean as you read this , I may not be able to respond right off in the meeting place thread to any inquiry about this hint . Thanks for your patience .
