DiskTracker Magazine/Newsletter Reviews

• MacCom Online (December 1997)
• MacAddict Magazine (October 1997)
• MacAddict Online (May 29, 1997)
• MyMac Online (April 1997)
• Macintosh User Group of London Ontario (February 1997)
• Macworld Magazine (June 1996)
• Macworld Magazine (June 1996)
• MyMac Online (April 1996)
• Shareware Junkies

Are you the type that has a hard time keeping track of what's on all your removable media (Zip disks, diskettes, CDs, etc.)? If so, DiskTracker is the inexpensive tool for you!

DiskTracker does a wonderful job of cataloging your drives and it does it very quickly and effortlessly. It can scan any of your volumes (including servers) quickly putting all of it's contents conveniently at your fingertips for use even when the disk/volume isn't mounted! DiskTracker is easy on RAM (can run efficiently on 512K of RAM) and disk space (catalog files are relatively small, even with lots of volumes scanned).

One of the nicest features of DiskTracker is the built-in search capabilities. You can search all your scanned volumes for anything and it does it very fast (even faster than the Finder!). You can also have DiskTracker eliminate duplicates in the catalog file.

Unlike some other disk catalogers, with DiskTracker, no extension is needed to track disks. The reason it's not required is because it doesn't track every disk you enter (that would get annoying after awhile and take up time and RAM), but rather lets you choose which disks to scan through the program. However, DiskTracker can be put in automatic mode (and can operate in the background) to scan floppies and all you have to do is keep supplying it with disks as it ejects them.

For viewing the contents of scanned volumes, DiskTracker uses a familiar Finder-like list. From there, you can browse volumes and even launch applications (provided that the volume is mounted). While you're browsing, you can change the name of scanned volumes, write descriptions of the volumes, and/or assign a unique ID number to them. The overall interface is nice and easy-to-use. DiskTracker can even make disk labels for you!

DiskTracker does include an extensive manual, although it isn't exactly easy to navigate through. For those Mac users who have so many floppies, Zip disks, and CDs packed with content (like me), you will greatly experience the power, ease, and convenience of DiskTracker. For cataloging, browsing, searching, and launching, DiskTracker is my choice of disk catalogers.

DiskTracker - Ranked number 34 on the list of the top 50 Macintosh shareware applications

Sure, everyone should back up their hard drives on a regular basis, but the process is so difficult especially if you don't know what's on all of those Zip disks that you keep in a shoe box above your monitor. DiskTracker comes to the rescue by quickly cataloging pretty much any media you can use with you Mac, including CD-ROMs, hard disks, floppy disks, Zip disks, and network volumes. DiskTracker allows you to search for files using multiple criteria and to launch those files with a double click; it even lets the Martha Stewart in you create your own festive disk labels.

DiskTracker 1.1.2 - Shareware pick of the week

"Don't forget to back up your work" is a recommendation I ignored for many years, until my machine went down and I had to mail it back to the manufacturer for repair. I paid dearly to have my local Mac techie put the important data onto a Zip disk, and I paid the price again for a new Zip drive. I learned the hard way, like most. Now I back up everything with any importance. This healthy practice, though, leads to a messy arrangement of last-minute, good-intentioned back-ups on a loose collection of label-free disks.

What to do if this is true for you too? Try DiskTracker 1.1.2, this week's Shareware Pick of the Week, to clean up the mess. DiskTracker helps you keep track of and manage all your disks with its 20-category Boolean search engine. That's cool, but its MacDraw-like label-printing capabilities, complete with templates, are the key feature of this helpful $20 shareware utility. The application looks like a Finder window, and the learning curve is minimal, despite its extensive options. A Microsoft Word-compatible manual is also available at the DiskTracker site.

If you use removable media much, like I do (having a small hard drive), you quickly tire of trying to remember where anything is. Fortunately, there are a few shareware programs that can automate this process.

My favorite is DiskTracker. It's not an extension, and it doesn't automatically track disks every time they're inserted. Personally, this would drive me crazy, as I pop them in and out fairly often. You have to launch it, but, once you do, it quickly and easily records everything. It takes about 15-20 seconds to buzz through an almost full Zip disk. I have four disks (including my hard drive) with 6,200 files, and the catalog only takes up 400k.

You can scan floppies in automatic mode, just sticking one in, waiting a few seconds until it's ejected, then sticking in the next. You can be warned if the names are the same (such as "untitled"), or it can assign a unique ID number to each. All you ever need to write on the floppy is its number.

The main window works just like List Views in the Finder, with all of the same shortcuts and viewing options, so it's instantly familiar. DiskTracker can read into stuffed archives. You can add an optional "notes" for each disk, with your own description.

Where it really pulls ahead of the competition is its search capabilities. It's amazingly fast, much faster than the Finder (since it's only searching a text list). It can quickly search for duplicates on a disk. You can do custom searches, like the 7.5 Find File, and you can create search filters. These are put together from built-in drop-down menus that offer every criteria you can imagine. The custom filters can be named and saved to use later. It has advanced label printing, for all different sizes. This would be useful for CD's or fixed archives. There is an extensive online manual, which, though it lacks many navigational features, is well laid out and comprehensive.

For those still beleaguered with dozens of floppy disks, DiskTracker 1.0.2 ($20) does a snappy job of cataloging even Aladdin Systems' StuffIt and Bill Goodman's Compact Pro archives. It includes fast searches and nifty labeling features as well.

In my January 1993 column, I longed for "a truly gorgeous, graceful, great [disk cataloger]. Something that reads your floppies fast, makes a searchable, collapsible disk list, and prints nice-looking labels. . . . Is that such a tall order?"

Evidently not for MIT sophomore Mark N. Pirri. Inspired, he taught himself to program, and after three years came up with DiskTracker: gorgeous, powerful, and incredibly useful.

Mark Pirri's DiskTracker 1.0.2 is a great shareware product. In fact, I will go so far as to say that if more shareware was up to the quality that DiskTracker 1.0.2 is at, then many more people would pay their shareware due's. (You know who you are!)

DiskTracker 1.0.2 is a disk management utility. Need to find a program but forgot what disk you have it on? DiskTracker will find it for you. Fast. And fast is the key word here. Up until I found and downloaded DiskTracker, I had been using Catfinder. While Catfinder was just fine for a while, I did notice that it was taking forever and a day to search its records for the software I wanted. Was it because I have such a huge disk collection? Or was it a flaw in the program itself? Either way, Catfinder just wasn't making the grade anymore.

Enter DiskTracker 1.0.2! After downloading it, I went about and cataloged twenty disks to try it out. (Hey, if it was a dog, there was no way was I going to load all my disks in!). A nice feature is that DiskTracker will also catalog your CD Roms, Zip drives, and most other removable media. (It will also catalog your internal or external hard drive as well.) So after loading the twenty disks, I tested it out. It was so fast finding what I wanted, that I decided to load up all my disks and try it again. Same results! Very fast search and report speeds.

A day later, I used it to again search for a file, and it was then that I noticed something I did not like. When you have such a huge library of disks, and keep them all on one record, it takes a while for DiskTracker to load that record and organize it. My solution to this was to create five different catalogs. (One for CD Roms, one for 100 floppies, etc...) This proved to be wise. Much faster loading after that!

DiskTracker 1.0.2 goes beyond simply searching your disk collection, however. Mr. Pirri also gave it the utility of creating disk labels. (In Avery 2186, 5164, and 5196 format, plus a custom set that you can change to your needs.) Disk labeling also has some features I was not expecting from a $20.00 shareware product. You can print in any font in your collection, in any style, size, pattern, and color!

Is DiskTracker 1.0.2 worth downloading? Yes! Is it worth the $20.00 shareware fee? You bet, and more! I cannot recommend this product enough! DiskTracker 1.0.2 should be used by anyone owning a large collection of disks! You can write to Mr. Pirri at TheVortex@kagi.com, or visit the DiskTracker home page at http://web.mit.edu/mnp/www/dt.html. (Um, Mark? You may want to shorten that HTML address some!;-)

If you are like many computer users that shuffle files from one computer to another, keep backups on floppies, own removable media, or burn CD's you know what a pain it can be to remember where you last left the file your boss wants in another 15 minutes. Disk Tracker is for you! Disk Tracker is a wonderful disk cataloging tool created by Mark Pirri of MIT. It offers among other features; built in virtual memory scheme, launch files directly from the program, fast, multi-parameter (use AND, OR, or XOR) searches, powerful disk labeling system, draw your own label templates using the built in MacDraw(tm)-style template editor, and many more. If you own a Zip drive, it's wonderful to keep track of all of your disks, and if you burn CD's it's much easier (and much, much faster) to search for something using DiskTracker. I am a bit biased to this program as I was a beta tester for it, but I can't deny that it hasn't been a godsend for me, it really has. Well worth the DL time, and in my opinion well worth the $20.

Performance: 4/5
User Friendly: 4.5/5
Cost: 4/5
Ease of Installation: 5/5
Support: 5/5