How Do I Catalog or List Everything on a Hard-Drive?

Question

I'm hoping this is the right category to post this.
Here is the situation... I have several external drives that contain movies ripped for my Apple TV. Many are nested in specific folders (i.e. Drama, Horror, Classics, etc... as well as by director).
Is there a utility that I can use to find out (or generate a list of) everything that is on a drive short of manually going into every single folder? Any help appreciated!

Answer 1

Open a HD in a Finder window (double-click its Desktop icon), put it in list view, CMD+A (to select all), CMDOPTright arrow (to open all subfolders), CMD+A, copy, launch TextEdit, CMDSHIFTT (put it in plain text mode), and CMD+V. Do note that this should preserve the folder and subfolder hierarchy, and will list everything on that HD.
Alternatively, you could use this Apple provided script to print each folder's contents, including subfolders.
<script>
Copyright © 2003 Apple Computer, Inc.
You may incorporate this Apple sample code into your program(s) without
restriction. This Apple sample code has been provided "AS IS" and the
responsibility for its operation is yours. You are not permitted to
redistribute this Apple sample code as "Apple sample code" after having
made changes. If you're going to redistribute the code, we require
that you make it clear that the code was descended from Apple sample
code, but that you've made changes.
property RadarProblem3258323IsFixed : false
on run {}
tell application "Finder"
try
set FinderSelection to the selection as alias list
on error
--Finder Scripting fails with one item (Radar problem 2741967)
set FinderSelection to the selection
end try
end tell
if RadarProblem3258323IsFixed then
set FS to FinderSelection
--Ideally, this list could be passed to the open handler
else
set FS to {}
repeat with EachItem in FinderSelection
copy EachItem as alias to end of FS
end repeat
end if
set SelectionCount to number of FS -- count
if SelectionCount is 0 then
set FS to userPicksFolder()
else if the SelectionCount is 1 then
set MyPath to path to me
if MyPath is item 1 of FS then
--If I'm a droplet then I was double-clicked
set FS to userPicksFolder()
end if
else
--I'm not a double-clicked droplet
end if
open FS
end run
on userPicksFolder()
set these_items to {}
set these_items to (choose folder with prompt "Select a folder whose contents you wish to print:") as list
end userPicksFolder
property pShortPath : ""
on open these_items
set the item_info to {}
repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items
set this_item to (item i of these_items)
set the item_info to info for this_item
if folder of the item_info is true then --if the item is a folder
set pShortPath to (item i of these_items as string)
set thePOSIXFilePath to POSIX path of pShortPath as string
processFolder(thePOSIXFilePath)
end if
end repeat
end open
on processFolder(theFolder)
set OldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "/"
set newTextList to text items of theFolder
set x to the count of newTextList
set printedPath to items 1 thru (x - 1) of newTextList as string
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to OldDelims
try
set theShellScript to ("( echo " & printedPath & " && ls -R \"" & printedPath & "\" ) | lpr " as string)
do shell script theShellScript
on error ErrMsg number ErrNmbr
tell application "Finder"
display dialog ErrMsg & "
Error: " & ErrNmbr buttons {"OK"} with icon note
end tell
end try
end processFolder
</script>
Copy everything between <script> and </script>, launch Script Editor (in /Applications/AppleScript/), paste into the window, click compile, and click run. Select the HD to index and click on Choose.