DiskCat

DiskCat was designed to create browsable and searchable catalogs of the contents of any directory whether on optical, physical or flash drive media types. The program can be used to create catalogs of contents for CD or DVD collections for instance. The program indexes all found items in the path and creates dummy (zero byte) files of each of the items and archive them in exactly the same folder and path structure. All into one single archive. It's like creating a snapshot of the contents of a directory. The format of the created catalog files will be in ZIP (Compressed folder) format. These archives can be opened, extracted and browsed by using DiskCat or any other compatible or associated program. Because of DiskCat's method of creating browsable catalogs of disk contents, these ZIP files are tiny and extraction processes are extremely fast. When running the program it will show all active (ready) drives connected to the PC and give the user the option to either select a path from the list or browse to and individual folder on the drive. Upon selecting a drive or folder, the drive label or folder name will be automatically inserted into the catalog name box. This will be used as the title of the catalog item. The name can be changed to something else if so wished. The user must then click a button in order to start the process. This usually does not take long at all, but it obviously depends on the number of items contained inside the directory. For indexing large physical media, some patience from the user's side must be implemented. The utility was not specifically designed for cataloging hard disks, but rather for creating browsable catalogs of CD or DVD backup collections. Finished catalogs will be stored in the global catalog store. Browse catalogs by pressing the corresponding button. This function will open the archive. Only ZIP archives are supported. This will extract the contents of the catalog's archive and display it in Windows Explorer.

What is new in this release:

Change log for DiskCat Version 0.9.8.9 - November 2015
1. The program will remember the last "browse to" directory if it was a folder on a computer.
2. Changed code to reduce CPU strain when cleaning up temporary folders after a disk scan has been completed. This change applies to the two sub applications i.e. "dcexit.exe" and "retmp.exe".
3. Removed the "Show List > Catalog List" button and replaced it with a "Browse" button.
4. Removed the "Browse Store" context menu item inside the catalog list.
5. The program is now using and displaying a slightly larger UI font. It gathers the current system font settings when run i.e "Segoe UI" as in Windows 7. Font size in the program is set at 10. If the system font cannot be found or configured for use in the program then it will revert to the "Tahoma" font which is native on almost all Windows systems.
6. Changed the "About" dialog to be separated from the main program's interface.
7. Added a program settings button and dialog where the user can change and configure certain basic program settings. The help file for the program has also been updated accordingly.
8. Changed parameters on the 7za.exe (7-Zip) archiving utility to include options to scan and index empty folders within a path also.
9. Changed parameters on the 7za.exe (7-Zip) archiving utility to include scanning inside supported archives found in a path and also create zero byte replicas of the files inside.
10. Changed certain parameters when using the Windows command processor.