Installation

What do I need?
Before installing DiskTracker, you should be sure that you have the minimum requirements to run the program including:

   • Any Macintosh computer. (DiskTracker is a fat binary, so it runs on 680x0 Macs and in native mode on PowerMacintoshes for maximum performance and compatibility.)

   • System (MacOS) 7.0 or higher.

   • At least 1 megabyte of available memory (which usually equates to 4 megabytes of RAM in your Macintosh).  DiskTracker should be able to run in as little as 512K of memory (utilizing a built in virtual memory system), but the default partition size is set to 1 megabyte to ensure optimum performance.

What’s in the DiskTracker package?
The DiskTracker package is normally distributed as a self-extracting StuffIt™ archive.  The package contains the following items:

  • the DiskTracker application

  • the DiskTracker manual (I’ll bet you haven’t found this yet!)

  • a Read Me file—contains important information that you need to know!

  • the Item Filters folder, containing several filters.

  • the Label Templates folder, containing several templates.

  • the Label Page Formats folder, containing several page formats.

  • Registration stuff folder.  See the registration read me in this folder for more info.

Please do not distribute copies of the DiskTracker package that do not contain all of the items listed above!

Installing DiskTracker
Installing DiskTracker is really very simple—just double-click the self-extracting archive.  You will be asked where you would like to put the DiskTracker folder—specify where you would like the software installed and the installer will do all of the work for you.

Starting up DiskTracker

To start up DiskTracker, simply double click on the program icon.  Shortly thereafter, you will be presented with an empty catalog window and you are ready to go!

Registering DiskTracker
For instructions on how to register DiskTracker, please see the Registration read me file in the Registration stuff folder.

Some important terms
Before you get started, there are some terms that you might want to be familiar with:

• Disk catalog—An “image” of the directory structure of a disk (or volume).  Disk catalogs are the primary focus of attention of DiskTracker, which creates, searches, and manages disk catalogs.
  
• Catalog file—A file which contains the disk catalogs of one or more disks.
  
• Disk list—The collection of disk catalogs contained in a catalog file.

  • Disk scan—The process by which a disk (or volume) is examined and a disk catalog is created from its file structure.

  • Item—Generally refers to either a file, a folder, or a volume.

  • Item class—An items type (i.e., file, folder, or volume).  Not to be confused with a file type (the four character code that identifies a file’s kind). 

  • Item filter—A collection of criteria which describe an item.  Item filters, often used in searches, can contain boolean operations and grouped criteria.

  • Label template—Defines how a label will look when it is printed.  Label templates can contain both static text items (do not change from label to label) and disk info fields, which show information about the disk (such as name, size, kind, etc).
  
• Label sheet format—Defines the characteristic for the type of sheet that you are printing disk labels onto.  Constains such information as the number of labels per page, the margins, the label size, and the spacing between labels.

About this manual
Because of the number of features in DiskTracker that must be documented and the fact that I would like to keep the entire DiskTracker package fairly reasonably sized, this manual, while demonstrating each feature of the program step by step, assumes some familiarity with using a Macintosh.  Whenever screen shots are included throughout the manual, they are from the black-and-white version of DiskTracker to save disk space (and to guarantee that folks who aren’t blessed with color machines won’t be left out).  Note that these screen shots do not represent what you would see if you were running DiskTracker on an 8-bit (256 color) or greater color (or 4-bit (16 shades) or greater gray scale) Macintosh.  On those types of screens, DiskTracker looks (in my probably-not-so-humble opinion) much better.