DiskBase is a disk cataloging program, i.e. it is able to read all the file and folder names from a disk and save it to its database. Then you can display the disk contents in a natural way and search in it - without necessity to have the disk present in the computer. This ability can be widely used namely with replaceable disk media, like floppy disks, CD-ROM, CD-R, ZIP, JAZ and any other disk media that behave as a standard disk in Windows. But not only that. DiskBase can also be used with fixed or network drives.

Storing just names of files and folders into the database might not be enough for searching. But DiskBase is also able to extract the names of files and folders from archives created by common compressing programs, like ZIP, RAR, ARJ, ACE and other (including self-extracting archives). Moreover, DiskBase is also able to store a description for each file or folder; you can do that either manually or let DiskBase to do it automatically by scanning the content of the file. With these features DiskBase is a powerful tool for keeping your disk archive clearly arranged.

DiskBase offers the user interface similar to the interface of Windows Explorer - with a tree and a list of files in the current folder displayed. DiskBase 5 is distributed as shareware.

What is DiskBase Useful For?

Let us give you a few examples for an illustration of DiskBase usage:

1. You are looking for a file with a (bit un)certain name, like "ACMELOGO.BMP" in a big heap of disks. Moreover, the file is probably hidden in some archive like ZIP or ARJ. You can spend dozens of minutes, even hours to find it. DiskBase, however, can do the search in seconds. Even if you do not have the disks scanned in a database, it is often faster to scan them first and then let DiskBase make the search, than to look for the file on disks manually using Windows Explorer or some other file manager.

2. One of the common backup strategies is to make a cyclic backup, i.e., you do not backup on one media (CD-RW, for example), but iterate through multiple media (10 for example) with the rule that the new backup is placed on the disk with the oldest backup. But how can you find, on which disk is the oldest backup? With DiskBase easily: it can sort a list of found files according to their date.

3. The short 8.3 file names from DOS are already obsolete for a long time - but even today you can still have many files with short, hardly understandable names in your archives. You are searching for some file, but cannot remember what name you gave it - was it CURVIATE.DOC or CV.DOC or CURRIC.DOC or anything completely else? If you are using descriptions in DiskBase, you can search for "Curriculum Vitae" and you will find it. Or you can remember approximate date when you last modified the file and it may also be enough for finding it. These features of DiskBase are useful not only for replaceable media, but also for fixed disks.

4. As a LAN Administrator you want to save information about the current state of network volumes. No problem with DiskBase. Also repeated searching on network volumes can be much faster using DiskBase (and a local database) than direct search on the volumes.

5. You are creating a CD-ROM with thousands of files. To give a fast orientation on the slow CD-ROM to the users, you can add unregistered version of DiskBase with the read-only database of the CD-ROM contents to the CD-ROM (such usage of DiskBase is free of charge - see the Trial Use License).

And so on...

How to Make the Database Up-to-date?

Well, this is the only thing, that requires a bit effort from you: you should run DiskBase disk scanning process each time you changed something on the disk and are going to remove it from the drive. Unfortunately this cannot be automated: there is no way, how the program in Windows can recognize that you are going to eject a disk.

However, scanning a disk by DiskBase is really a simple task. As it is explained in the Command line mode chapter, you can even create a icons for running DiskBase with various parameters that cause DiskBase to run, scan a disk and terminate automatically. DiskBase also has smart time-saving features; for example if you a have a slow floppy disk full of archives, only contents of modified archives is read when the disk is already in the database.