Disk Wizard is $10 shareware. See file "How to register" for details on how to register.
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Before you start reading, remember : if there is anything you don't like about Disk Wizard, don't just throw it away - tell me. I'm open to all suggestions, and my programs will definitely benefit from your feedback!
Contents
• What is Disk Wizard?
• Let's baash the competition!
• Installation
• Automatic cataloguing
• Using Disk Wizard
- Window interface
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Menus
- More about fetching files
- Scanning disks from the Disk Wizard application
- Searching
- Searching for duplicates
- Preferences
- Statistics window
• Disclaimer
• Distribution
• Version History
• Planned improvements
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: regular expression syntax
What is Disk Wizard?
Disk Wizard is an advanced disk cataloging program. It is made up of two components: a system extension (Wizard INIT) and an application (Disk Wizard). Once it is installed, Disk Wizard automatically catalogs the contents of your volumes (hard disks, floppies, CDs, SyQuests, whatever). Thus, Disk Wizard's catalog is always up-to-date, without your needing to do any scanning chores. Disk Wizard will even see through StuffIt 3.0 or Compact Pro archives if you wish.
At any time, you can launch the Disk Wizard application. In seconds, it will answer questions such as "Where did I put file X?" or "On what floppy can I store this 300K file?". It will let you copy files from your backup media simply by dragging them from Disk Wizard to the Finder (if you have System 7.5). It will also expand StuffIt archives on the fly (if you have Aladdin's StuffIt™ Engine). It will look for duplicate files on your disks. And much more!
Disk Wizard is now accelerated for Power Macintosh. It's the fastest file searching tool around!
Let's bash the competition!
Here's a quick list of the other disk catalogers I have tried, and why I think Disk Wizard is better. Let me know if I am wrong.
- PowerScan: it has a very, very neat interface (hi Jonas!) but it doesn't even remember which files were on which volumes, so it isn't suitable to maintain a disk library.
- VirtualDisk and AutoCat: they can catalog disks automatically like Disk Wizard. That's cool. However, they create Finder aliases to all your files. This means that some things can't be done (like looking for duplicates, or expanding archives on the fly). Also, the catalog data on your hard disk takes much more room (even though VirtualDisk uses a virtual volume). Try cataloging 200,000 files with them.
- CatFinder and Offline: the interface is acceptable, but cataloging isn't automatic.
- FileList+: not automatic, lame interface.
- DiskCat: not automatic, few features.
Installation
Disk Wizard requires System 7 or later. It has been tested with systems 7.0, 7.1 and 7.5. It will take advantage of the Macintosh Drag and Drop extension (which is built into System 7.5, but can also be installed on a Mac running 7.1). If present, it will also use Aladdin's StuffIt™ Engine, which is bundled with DropStuff™.
The Disk Wizard application is a fat binary: it will run at its best on 68k Macs as well as Power Macs.
Installing is easy: just put Wizard INIT into your Extensions folder. It will become active after you reboot your Mac. The Disk Wizard application can go anywhere on your disk; I suggest that you place an alias to it in your Apple Menu for quick access.
Note: installing the Wizard INIT is optional. The INIT is necessary if you want your disks to be scanned automatically upon ejection. If you don't want this feature, you can still use Disk Wizard as a regular disk cataloger without installing the INIT.
Note to users of Disk Wizard 1.0.x: version 2.0 can use your existing disk library without change. Just leave the existing "Wizard's Library ƒ" folder alone (it's in your Preferences folder) and version 2.0 will use it. Do *not* delete it! You can however, destroy the old preferences file, since it will be ignored by version 2.0.
Version 2.0 has new icons; you should rebuild your desktop in order to make them appear if you used a previous version.
Automatic cataloguing
The next paragraph assumes that Disk Wizard is set up to catalog your disks automatically. See the section about Preferences for details about the settings.
Every time you eject a disk, the Wizard notices it and scans its contents before ejecting it (fixed disks are scanned when the machine is shut down or restarted). It records the data into a special folder located within your Preferences folder. You will notice that ejecting a disk takes longer than before; the more files there are on the disk, the longer. Disk Wizard recognizes disks based on their name only: you must ensure that every disk has a unique name. If two disks have the same name Disk Wizard will think they're the same disk. The simplest way is to use numbers as (part of) disk names.
Here are a few things you should know:
• You can define a modifier key combination which will force Disk Wizard to ignore the disk being ejected. The catalog data won't be updated, but you will gain time. See the section about Preferences for more detail.
• By default, Disk Wizard records its data into a folder named "Wizard's Library ƒ" and located inside your Preferences folder. If you want the data to be put elsewhere, you should move this folder somewhere else and put an alias to it in its place. The alias should be named "Wizard's Library ƒ" too so that Disk Wizard can find it. You should avoid typing this name; instead, copy and paste the existing folder's name.
• The disk won't be scanned if its contents weren't modified since you last inserted it. Note that opening/closing Finder windows causes the Finder to write some information to the disk, which causes the disk to be scanned again.
• If you rename a disk, Disk Wizard notices it and renames the corresponding entry in its catalog. If the new disk name is one which you don't want to be scanned (see "Which volumes to ignore" below), then the entry is deleted.
• If you eject disks (causing them to be scanned again) while Disk Wizard is open, it will notice it and update its display in the next few seconds.
Using Disk Wizard
Window interface
When you launch the Disk Wizard application, it reads the catalog data, which is stored on your hard disk, and displays it. The main window, called "Desktop", displays the list of all volumes. It is analogous to the Finder's Desktop. You can display a volume's contents by double-clicking it (or selecting Open from the File menu).
Disk Wizard displays data in a way similar to the Finder's. Each volume or folder has its own window, which you can reveal by double-clicking or selecting Open from the File menu. Folders have a triangle control left of their name, which allows you to reveal or collapse their contents. Unlike Finder windows, Disk Wizard windows will adjust their size automatically when you change a triangle's state.
If you click in a window title while holding the command key, you will see a popup menu showing the enclosing folders, as in the Finder. Selecting an item from this menu will display the appropriate window.
The list displayed by any window can be sorted according to the data contained in any column. To change the sorting criterion, just click on the column name. You can also sort down by option-clicking a column name. The active sorting criterion is underlined.
You can sort according to several criterions by sorting first according to the minor one, and then sorting according to the major one.
You can choose to hide certain columns. See the Preferences section for details.
The Windows menu keeps a list of all the currently open windows, for quick access.
Keyboard shortcuts
The key shortcuts are modeled after the Finder's. If you are a Finder power user, they should seem very intuitive.
In every window, you can select items by clicking on them. Shift-clicking selects a range, and command-clicking adds or removes a single line to/from the current selection. Note that although this is the recommended behavior, it is slightly different from the Finder's.
Holding down the Option key while opening a window will close the previous one in addition.
The Up and Down arrow keys move the selection up and down, respectively. The Page Up and Page Down keys scroll the window up and down.
Items can be selected by typing in the first few letters of their name. Typing Tab will select the next item alphabetically, and typing Shift-Tab will select the previous one.
Menus
The File menu contains important commands. Open reveals the contents of a disk or folder. Quit justs quits Disk Wizard, of course. Other commands are described later on, in a section of their own.
The Edit menu contains miscalleous commands. Cut, Copy, Paste and Clear let you edit text (when a dialog with a text field is active). Select All selects all lines in the frontmost window. Select Category is available only when the Desktop window is frontmost; it selects all volumes with the specified category (assuming that you have defined categories for your volumes using Volumes:Change Category).
Finally, Copy author's address lets you copy my addresses to the clipboard : Internet, World Wide Web or Snail Mail address.
The Volumes menu is active when you have selected volumes in the Desktop window. Selecting Forget clears all selected volumes from the database. A confirmation dialog will appear first; you can bypass it by holding the Option key when choosing Forget. The Backspace key is an equivalent for the Forget command.
The Change category command lets you change the contents of the Category field for the selected volumes. You can put anything in there; this field is here to help you sort your disks. You can either directly select an existing category from the menu, or choose Other... If you choose the latter, a small dialog box appears; you can either type in a new category, or use the popup menu to select an existing category.
The Items menu is active when you have selected files in a folder window.
The Select in Finder command will bring the Finder to the front and make it display the selected files. It will ask you to insert the right disk first if necessary. This feature is very useful to quickly locate relevant files without digging into the folder hierarchy by hand. Hitting Return or Enter will have the same effect.
The Fetch command will copy the selected files or folders from the disk to a place which you specify. When you select this menu, Disk Wizard first asks you to select a destination folder; then, it asks you to insert the right disk, if necessary. Finally, it copies the selected items. Hitting Option-Return or Option-Enter has the same effect as Fetch.
The Search Results menu is active when a Search Results window is frontmost. The Display in own window command displays the folder window(s) containing the selected matches (you can also double-click or use Open). The Compute full path command computes full paths for the selected matches and displays them in the Location column (you can also hit Enter).
Why are full paths not automatically computed? This is because they take a lot of space in memory, and a lot of screen real estate. Hence, when a Search Results window is created, the Location column contains just the volume name. You can use the Compute full path command to get full paths for the items that look interesting to you. As I said, full paths take up a lot of memory; don't try to compute the full paths for thousands of matches!
More about fetching files
Speed:
Using Fetch is recommended over using Select in Finder and then copying files by hand. This is because Disk Wizard copies files much faster than the Finder; also, it can expand compressed archives on the fly (see below).
Drag and Drop support:
If you have System 7.5 (or 7.1 with the Macintosh Drag and Drop extension and Finder 7.1.3), then you can drag files from a Disk Wizard window and drop them somewhere in the Finder. This has the same effect than using Fetch, but it's much handier.
Drag and Drop alone is a sufficient reason to upgrade to System 7.5. It's soooo cool!
Subtleties about compressed files:
If you try to fetch files whose name is displayed in italics (i.e. files contained inside a compressed archive), Disk Wizard will copy the whole compressed archive instead, because it can't decompress the individual files you need.
However, if you have installed Aladdin's StuffIt™ Engine into your Extensions folder, then Disk Wizard will be able to decompress StuffIt 3.0 archives on the fly. If you fetch (or drag to the Finder) files contained within an archive, then these files will be extracted out of the archive. Note that the whole archive is not decompressed; only the files you need are. [Note to version 1.0.x users: this feature is enabled only if the disk has been scanned with Disk Wizard version 2.0 or later].
Also, when fetching a StuffIt 3.0 archive, you have a choice between simply copying it, or decompressing it instead (see the section about preferences).
Scanning disks from the Disk Wizard application
If the Wizard INIT is installed, disks will be scanned automatically when you eject them (hard disks will be scanned when the Mac is shut down). However, you can also initiate a scan by using the Scan command from the File menu. You will be prompted to choose a volume, which will then be scanned.
It is possible to stop a scanning operation by clicking on Abort or hitting the Escape key. However, doing so will delete all information about this disk from the library.
You can also scan disks by dropping them onto Disk Wizard's icon in the Finder.
If you want to scan many disks at once, you can use the Fast Scan command. A modal dialog will appear; any disks that you insert will be scanned and ejected. This lets you scan quickly a whole pile of disks.
The Fast Scan dialog also lets you rename your disks easily. If you type a new name in the first text field, it will be used to rename the next disk. Disk Wizard is smart: if you have many disks, it knows you don't want to give the same name to all of them. So if the name you have typed ends with a number, Disk Wizard will automatically increment this number after scanning a disk. Assuming you have typed 'Disk 01', the first disk you insert will be renamed to 'Disk 01', the second to 'Disk 02', and so on.
Finally, the Fast Scan dialog lets you assign a category to the disks you're scanning: just type in a category, or select an existing one from the popup menu.
When you're done scanning disks, click the Done button to exit the Fast Scan mode.
Searching
Select Find from the File menu to bring the Search dialog to the front. This dialog looks like the Finder's Find dialog.
First, you have to specify what to search for. There's a text field which allows you to enter a search string. The Case sensitive check box specifies whether case differences should be taken into account when searching. The first popup menu (does/does not) allows you to apply a logic NOT to the search criterion. Finally, the second popup menu lets you specify whether the search string should be equal to the file name (match exactly), or be a part/the beginning/the end of it. The match pattern setting is for advanced users; it allows you to specify a regexp (regular expression) against which the file name should be matched. Regular expressions are described at the end of this file.
Then, you must specify where to search. A popup menu lets you choose between all volumes, only the volumes selected in the Desktop window, or just the frontmost folder window (if there is one).
Once you have chosen your search criterion, click Find (or hit the Return key) to start searching. Disk Wizard displays a progress dialog while it conducts the search; you can switch to another application, and the search will take place in the background.
When it's done, Disk Wizard displays all matches in a window called Search Results. The results can be sorted by clicking (or option-clicking) on a column heading; this lets you easily find the particular match you are looking for. Double-clicking any item of the results window (or hitting Return or Enter) will take you to the folder window containing this item.
Note: a more advanced way of specifying the search criterion is desirable. I have delayed it until a future release in order to get 2.0 out more quickly.
Searching for duplicates
Disk Wizard lets you look for duplicate files. Select Search for Duplicates from the File menu to initiate a search.
A dialog appears and asks you to specify a few settings. First, a popup menu lets you choose where to look: on all volumes or only on the selected volumes.
Important note: Disk Wizard's algorithm to find duplicates is very fast, but also very memory-hungry. If it tells you that it has run out of memory, try reducing the number of volumes included in the search. You can also try quitting other applications.
Next, you must tell Disk Wizard what conditions should be met by two files in order to be considered as duplicates. By default, they should have the same name, type, creator and creation date. Feel free to change these settings if you want the conditions to be more or less strict.
Once you have chosen these settings, hit the OK button. Disk Wizard then conducts the search. The results are displayed in a Search Results window. Groups of duplicate files are displayed together and separated with dashed lines. As usual, double-clicking an item in the results window will reveal the folder window it belongs to.
Preferences
Selecting Preferences from the File menu brings up the Preferences dialog. It is divided into several sections; use the popup menu at the top of the dialog to display the section you need.
Note to version 1.0.x users: the format of the preferences file has changed in version 2.0. You should delete your old preferences file.
Which volumes to ignore:
You can choose not to scan certain volumes, based on their names. The dialog allows you to specify a list of conditions. They are connected by an implicit OR, that is, any volume whose name fulfills at least one of the conditions will be ignored.
Use the two popup menus and the text field at the bottom of the dialog to specify a new condition and click Add condition to add it to the list. The other button, Remove condition, lets you remove conditions from the list.
This feature is useful to avoid cataloging disks whose contents are not of interest to you. For instance, you could specify that all disks whose name starts with "Temp" are to be ignored.
The name comparison is case-insensitive.
Which files to ignore:
This works exactly like volumes to ignore. Any file or folder whose name fills one of the condition you specify here will be ignored when scanning disks. This lets you ignore common and uninteresting files such as Desktop, Desktop DB, Desktop DF, VM Storage, AppleShare PDS, Trash, etc.
Note: if you are trying to prevent custom folder icons to be scanned, keep in mind that these files are actually named "Icon\r", that is, "Icon" followed by a carriage return.
Note that the files will be ignored when the disk is scanned, as opposed to when the data is displayed. This means that changing the preferences has no effect on the existing disk library; only disks scanned afterwards will be affected.
Which drives to scan:
These settings are also intended to let Disk Wizard knows which disks to scan. This time, it isn't based upon their names, but rather upon their type (floppy, CD, SyQuest, etc.)
The dialog displays a list of currently connected drives. Disk Wizard knows about two kinds of drives : floppy drives and SCSI drives (let me know if you have drives that do not fit into one of these categories).
You can use the Scan and Don't scan buttons to tell Disk Wizard which drives are of interest to you. A mark (√) is displayed in front of a drive if it is to be scanned. The Rebuild drive list button tells Disk Wizard to update the drive list, in case some drives have been added or disconnected.
Modifier keys upon ejection:
This section lets you define a set of modifier keys which will prevent a disk from being scanned if they are pressed when you eject it. By default, the settings say "the option should be up", which means that pressing the option key will prevent disks from being scanned again upon ejection.
Handling compressed archives:
The first two check boxes let you tell Disk Wizard whether StuffIt 3.0 and Compact Pro should be scanned. If you choose to scan them, these archives will look like folders in the displayed hierarchy. Files contained within an archive are displayed in italics to show that they don't actually exist on the disk.
The ability to scan compressed archives is a vital feature, I think; however, by turning it off, you will save time (scanning will be faster) and hard disk space (the catalog files will be smaller).
StuffIt 1.5.1 archives are not supported, because this format is now obsolete. Compact Pro archives are recognized; however, the best format is StuffIt 3.0, since Disk Wizard can decompress it on the fly (provided that you have installed Aladdin's StuffIt™ Engine).
Views:
This section lets you choose the font and size for all windows. Also, it lets you show or hide certain columns at will. For instance, I think that creation and modification dates for volumes aren't useful and clutter the screen, so I hide them.
Statistics window
Selecting Statistics from the Windows menu will bring up a small window with a few figures.
It tells you the amount of free memory allotted to Disk Wizard, the amount of System memory used by Disk Wizard (since he's smart enough to steal some from the System when needed), and the amount of remaning System memory. (What I call System memory here is temporary memory, aka Multifinder memory - not the System Heap).
Also, the windows displays the number of disks Disk Wizard knows about, and the total numbers of files and folders on them (including files contained inside compressed archives).
You may copy and give away this software freely, as long as you distribute the package as a whole, under its original form. You may include it in CD-ROMs or other shareware collections, provided that acquiring the collection doesn't remove the user's obligation to register the software.
Distribution of beta versions is prohibited - make sure you a have a public release (i.e. there is no 'b' in the version number) before giving Disk Wizard away.
If, after a reasonable trial period, you wish to keep it, you must register it. See the separate file "How to register" for registering information.
Version History
2.0b1 [Not released]:
Too many improvements to be listed here. The package was rewritten from scratch.
2.0b2 [Not released]:
New icons.
No longer asks you to re-insert ejected disks on shutdown.
Displays an alert when no matches are found.
Doesn't scan SCSI drives by default.
Displays small icons inside hierarchy popup menus.
Displays the full path of found items in search results windows (on demand).
Column titles act more like buttons.
Added an Unselect All command.
When you stop a search, matches found so far can be displayed.
Scanning operations initiated within the application can be aborted.
Fixed two bugs which caused address errors on Classics (those evil dwarves :-)
Fixed a bug which would cause the Finder to report it had run out of memory.
Fixed a bug which would prevent the app from updating its data in real time on Power Macs.
Name comparison is case-insensitive when checking whether a disk should be ignored.
Renaming a disk to an ignored name (e.g. "Untitled") deletes its entry.
2.0b3 [Not released]:
Files can now be ignored during scanning, based on their name (see Preferences).
Added "match exactly" option to specify conditions on file/volume names more easily.
Volume names are shown by default in the Location column of Search Results windows.
More information is shown together with SCSI IDs in the Preferences window.
Disks ejected via Cmd-Shift-1 are now correctly scanned.
Modified the Change Category menu to allow direct access to existing categories.
2.0b4 [Not released]:
Fixed incorrect display in "Which volumes/files to scan" panels.
Disks with no files don't cause crashes any more.
The Desktop window displays the number of items Disk Wizard knows about instead of the total number of files.
Fixed a bug which would cause the Desktop window to disappear off the screen.
The Desktop window remembers how the disks are sorted across invocations of the program.
God rid of the little arrow next to column titles. Option-clicking still sorts down.
2.0 :
Made some fixes in the code that searches for duplicates. Memory leaks and type 28 errors should be gone.
INIT icon correctly goes to the second row when the first row has been filled.
No more crashes when fetching a fetching a file from one floppy to another. Still, it isn't recommended.
Command-option-W closes all windows but the Desktop window.
(Tried to) fix bug which would prevent the About box from giving back control to the user.
Planned Improvements
Among the improvements planned for the next major release are:
- A more powerful search dialog
- Better memory handling to get more speed and safety.
- A real offline Finder: file deletion, copy between windows and from Finder windows to Disk Wizard windows.
- A French version. I'll work on it as soon as 2.0 stabilizes.
- And lots of little details...
Some of the improvements listed above require rewriting a good half of the code, so it is going to take some time...
Among the improvements *not* currently planned are:
- Printing catalogs. I don't have a printer (student budget). You can print exported files using another program.
Feel free to suggest improvements or report bugs!
Acknowledgements
Thanks to...
Jim Luther of DTS for the MoreFiles library.
Marco Piovanelli for showing me how to display icons in a popup menu.
Leonard Rosenthol and Aladdin for the StuffIt Engine interface.
Henry Spencer at U of T for the regexp code.
All the beta testers who took the time to send detailed reports and suggestions.
... and everybody who registered! Thanks to you shareware is a cool hobby!
Appendix: Regular expression syntax
Here's the definition of a regular expression. This is intended as a reminder, not an explanation; it will be somewhat steep if you never heard about regexps before.
A regular expression (sometimes called pattern) is a condensed representation of a set of strings. The strings in this set are said to be matches for the regular expression ; others are said to be rejected by the regexp. For instance, the regular expression '\.c$' matches all strings ending in '.c'.
A regular expression is zero or more branches, separated by `|'. It matches anything that matches one of the branches.
A branch is zero or more pieces, concatenated. It matches a match for the first, followed by a match for the second, etc.
A piece is an atom possibly followed by `*', `+', or `?'. An atom followed by `*' matches a sequence of 0 or more matches of the atom. An atom followed by `+' matches a sequence of 1 or more matches of the atom. An atom followed by `?' matches a match of the atom, or the null string.
An atom is a regular expression in parentheses (matching a match for the regular expression), a range (see below), `.' (matching any single character), `^' (matching the null string at the beginning of the input string), `$' (matching the null string at the end of the input string), a `\' followed by a single character (matching that character), or a single character with no other significance (matching that character).
A range is a sequence of characters enclosed in `[]'. It normally matches any single character from the sequence. If the sequence begins with `^', it matches any single character not from the rest of the sequence. If two characters in the sequence are separated by `-', this is shorthand for the full list of ASCII characters between them (e.g. `[0-9]' matches any decimal digit). To include a literal `]' in the sequence, make it the first character (following a possible `^'). To include a literal `-', make it the first or last character.
