Indexing Software

Is there any indexing software for files on drives not plugged in. A program like spotlight, but when searching you find a file and you click on it and it tells you which of your externals it is on..

I have quite a few externals and try to keep organized but would like a program where I could search an index and it would tell me which drive to plug in. This way I do not need to have all the drives plugged in at all times, causing unnecessary wear causing possible data loss, or needlessly using electricity.

I don't know how well this will work but bear with me.

You can use the locate tool. I just tried it and it listed files on my external with it both plugged in and not plugged in. Now, if you can't plug in all your externals, this isn't going to work.

Nonetheless, in Terminal, run: Once that's done, you can just type: The downsides to this are that you have to manually update the db and AFAIK, it will only update the database with files that it has access to at the moment (ie. drives plugged in).

This might also be a worthy read (for spotlight) as well but as the document says, the, "only requirement is that the volume needs to be mounted to perform a search."