Image of a folder

cormie

Hi,
Is there any way you can get an image of a folder? So basically, it will be a copy of a folder that could have say, 50GB of files in different folders but instead of it actually copying the files, it just gives an image of the files.

so just say you had a folder like:

Images\spring 2005\Mountains\1.jpg

and when you click the .jpg that could be say 1mb in size, you would see the picture.

Well is there any way to have it so you can make an image of everything in the folder so it will give a new folder on a floppy disc for example that will have:

Images\spring 2005\mountains\1.jpg

and when you click on 1.jpg, it's only something like 2k big but it gives you all the info about the original 1.jpg file, and you can't see the picture, just get the info about it. It would also be handy if you could have the size of the folder too, for example

Images (50GB)\Spring 2005(6.8GB)\Mountains(218MB)

a bit complicated, sorry!

Fibonacci

Like a shortcut????

..but you want to create a whole folder of shortcuts?

Can you just select all files, right click and say send to desktop as shortcuts. then collect them on the desktop and put them in a folder?

Capt'n Midnight

If you are using windows you could do something similar with a batch file
you end up with a text file listing the files in a folder.
[php]cd \
For /R %%i in (.) do dir "%%i" >"%%ifilez.txt"
Xcopy .filez.txt A:\filez.* /s[/php]

spacemonger does this on live drives and there is an opensource thingy for *nix that should do the same so having it save and restore might work - but why ???

dawballz

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

If you are using windows you could do something similar with a batch file
you end up with a text file listing the files in a folder.
[php]cd \
For /R %%i in (.) do dir "%%i" >"%%ifilez.txt"
Xcopy .filez.txt A:\filez.* /s[/php]

spacemonger does this on live drives and there is an opensource thingy for *nix that should do the same so having it save and restore might work - but why ???

sorry for hijacking the thread but I have loads of CD's with various stuff on them.. would that code work i I wanted to stick in the cd, run that code and it will output all the contents of the cd to a text file?

Mutant_Fruit

i had a program like that that archived the contents of discs (and folders too, iirc). It then stored the info about what file is where and what directory it was in and disc it was on. Is that what you were looking for?

Capt'n Midnight

dawballz wrote:

sorry for hijacking the thread but I have loads of CD's with various stuff on them.. would that code work i I wanted to stick in the cd, run that code and it will output all the contents of the cd to a text file?

You'd need to debug it
or just
Dir /S /O > file.txt

Dir /? for other options / sorting

cormie

I don't really just want to list things. For example, if I was to give a friend a floppy with what I want done, on it. He would be able to open each folder and see the file names date,size etc and compare it to his, so if say, we both had an archive of photography, and he got a virus and lost a few of them, he'd be able to go through the floppy, delete the ones he already has, give it back to me and I could then make a copy of my collection, drag the folder of the shortcuts (or whatever they would be) from the floppy to my desktop, then drag and drop the collection of my copy to the folder from the floppy, it will ask "do I want to replace this with that" I click no, so since he would have deleted everything he already has, then everything he has from my collection will go into that folder and I will be left with everything he doesn't have.... get me? haha.

Khannie did a code for me to list all folders and subfolders before. This isn't the same thing I'm looking for so.

Thanks for the replies thus far:)

Fibonacci

Is this a 'briefcase'?

cormie

well I don't know the exact details of a briefcase, but a briefcase would need the full files in each briefcase right? I basically just want an image of a folder with all file info etc and the ability to browse and delete different folders.

snappieT

So, an INDEX of all the files, containing all the metadata (like time, size) but without the actual data?

Google DesktopSearch maybe?

cormie

snapscan1212p wrote:

So, an INDEX of all the files, containing all the metadata (like time, size) but without the actual data?

yeah that's basically what I want with the ability to browse/delete the folders and file names etc. Also. It would be handy if you could select multiple folders and check what size they would be if they contained the actual files. Had a quick google but all that came up was some german ISP service?!?!

Capt'n Midnight

Ok you need fsum then - it can compare files.

On PC A
CD folder
Fsum -jnu -r *.* > MD5.txt

On PC B
CD folder
fsum -c MD5.txt > MIA.txt

MIA will list files missing or corrupted - eg: ILOVEYOU wrecked images not deleted them.

cormie

Eughhh... thanks... but is that for me? I don't have a clue what all that fsum-jsu lmnop lingo is

Where do I input that?

thanks again:)

snappieT

Start> Run

Type CMD

In the black window that comes up, enter that code.

the cd thing is to go to the folder you want:
cd c:\music for example

~snapscan

cormie

Ok, so before I spend hours trying to figure this out :rolleyes:

... will it actually make a folder the way I described or does it just compare two folders? I need a new folder made the way I described

thanks!

cormie

cormie wrote:

Ok, so before I spend hours trying to figure this out :rolleyes:

... will it actually make a folder the way I described or does it just compare two folders? I need a new folder made the way I described

thanks!

bump??:)

snappieT

I don't know. I've never even heard of that command before. I just knew what you were talking about, and how to get you into command prompt.

I don't think it will preserve the metadata though.

Capt'n Midnight

cormie wrote:

Ok, so before I spend hours trying to figure this out :rolleyes:

... will it actually make a folder the way I described or does it just compare two folders? I need a new folder made the way I described

thanks!

no it does not make folders, folders take up a LOT of space on floppies.

Khannie

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

folders take up a LOT of space on floppies.

Not so the last time I checked (a long time ago admittedly). The FAT for a floppy is different to that on a HDD. Allocation size is very small. Also, I think that NTFS can have 512byte sized allocations for hdd's if you think there will be a lot of very small files on your hdd.

cormie

Well even just to have a zip of all the folders for download or to be able to send it through email. Just with the data in folders with a fake file kinda thing. Is it impossible?

cormie

It's not looking too likely that this is possible no

rsynnott

On a REAL OPERATING SYSTEM, that's called a soft link, but since you're talking about folders you're probably on windows. Apparently, there IS a way to do a hard link on windows (Microsoft do it on some of their product CDs), but it's undocumented. Google.

cormie

Yep, I use XP.. ok what should I google for? I'm totally ignorant in this field:P
thanks

Capt'n Midnight

Khannie wrote:

Not so the last time I checked (a long time ago admittedly). The FAT for a floppy is different to that on a HDD. Allocation size is very small. Also, I think that NTFS can have 512byte sized allocations for hdd's if you think there will be a lot of very small files on your hdd.

Too much time spent trying to cram stuff on to boot disks when you are trying to squeeze one last little util on it..
Long file names take more than one FAT entry and there will be many nested sub folders too. Unless you have tons of images you should be ok - but inelegant way of storing info and could take ages to drill down to sub folders in explorer.

It's 512 bytes per allocation unit on 1.44 floppies by default / 2,847 allocation units. - so depending on file/folder name length should be able to handle ~ 2,000 references.

cormie

So that's a no then:P?