How do I aim Everything at an external USB Drive?

[Mike Lynch]

I'd like to search over 100 external USB Drives having photos of my family covering three generations.

How can I aim Everything at one of the external USB Drives at a time?

Once searched with Everything, how can I save just the photos to a separate USB Drive?

Best regards,

Mike Lynch (Novice)

[void]

Please try File Lists

[Mike Lynch]

I asked two questions in one Post.

I believe I need the answer to my first Post to proceed.

It was:

I'd like to search over 100 external USB Drives having photos of my family covering three generations.

How can I aim Everything at one of the external USB Drives at a time?

Mike Lynch (Novice)

[therube]

Explain further?
One at a time?
Are you looking to retain the indexed data for each drive?


You've got all 100 plugged in at once?
(I'll assume not .)

You plug 1 in, & it is assigned, D: drive.
You remove it.

You plug 2 in, & it is assigned, D: drive.
You remove it...

Or you're plugging 4 drives in, & they're assigned; D: E: F: & G:.
Or?

Are the drives all NTFS, or a mix of NTFS & FAT, or... (& does that matter)?
Is Everything set to automatically remove offline volumes (Tools | Options | Indexes -> NTFS|FAT)?

And what happens in Everything (depending on above)?

[therube]

Once searched with Everything, how can I save just the photos to a separate USB Drive?

Set the Picture filter, so that only "pictures" turn up.

After that... depends.
Directory structures of source & target & you may have to consider duplicate names & ...

[Mike Lynch]

I want to process one Drive at a time with Everything.
Each Drive processed will be done individually.
I do not want to retain any info from the Drive processed with Everything.
I do however want to Copy the Photos found by Everything to a separate USB Drive.

How do I aim, direct, cause Everything to search a single External USB Drive?

The Drive(s) in question will be inserted and removed in sequence in an External USB Docking Station.

I will be processing +-100 Drives, if a Forum Member can tell / teach me how to Aim Everything at the Drive in the Docking Station in question.

I'm not interested in what might be on the C: Systems Drive, just what's on the External USB Drive.

[void]

To copy your Everything photo search to another drive:

• In Everything, search for your desired photos.
• Select all your files to copy. (Ctrl + A to select all)
• From the Edit menu, under the Advanced submenu, click Advanced Copy to Folder....
• Uncheck Regex.
• Change the old format to:
  %1:\%2
• Change the new format to:
  E:\%2
  
  (where E: is your external USB drive)
• Review the newly generated filenames at the bottom.
• Click OK.

[Mike Lynch]

How do I aim, direct, cause Everything to search a single External USB Drive?

The Drive(s) in question will be inserted and removed in sequence in an External USB Docking Station.

I will be processing +-100 Drives, if a Forum Member can tell / teach me how to Aim Everything at the Drive in the Docking Station in question.

I'm not interested in what might be on the C: Systems Drive, just what's on the External USB Drive.

[void]

Create a single file list for each USB drive.

Have the filename for the file list match your USB drive label.

For example:
USB Drive #99.efu
USB Drive 2024-10-16.efu



Open this file list by filename when you want to search that specific USB drive:

Double click the .efu file to open the file list in Everything.

-or-

To open a file list in Everything:

• In Everything, from the File menu, click Open File List....
• Select your file list.
• Click Open.

Type in your desired search and browse the results.

When you are done searching this file list, close the file list from File -> Close File List.



If you want to index all 100+ file lists, add them to your Everything index under Tools -> Options -> File lists.
To limit your results to a specific file list when you are indexing multiple file lists, include the following in your search:
filelist-filename:"my file list filename.efu"

For example:
filelist-filename:"USB Drive #99.efu"
filelist-filename:"USB Drive 2024-10-16.efu"



To remove the C: drive from your index:

• In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the NTFS tab on the left.
• Uncheck Automatically included new fixed volumes.
• Uncheck Automatically included new removable volumes.
• Uncheck Automatically remove offline volumes.
• For each NTFS Volume:
  • Uncheck Include in database.
• Click OK.

[Mike Lynch]

What is "a single file list" for each USB drive.

So, I'm creating something 100 times?
Then using the something to process each Drive?

My apologies, I misunderstood the potential of Everything.

I do not believe Everything is the Tool, I thought it to be.
While it might be able to do the job, the effort required is well beyond the scope of the project.

Thank you one and all for your feedback.

Mike Lynch

[void]

You can generate the file list automatically with the following command:

Everything.exe -create-file-list <output-filename> <path-to-scan>

For example:

Plug in USB drive #99
Run the following command:

"C:\Program Files\Everything\Everything.exe" -create-file-list "C:\filelists\USB disk #99.efu" E:

where E: is your USB drive.

repeat for all 100+ drives.

How do I make an EFU File list from the command line?

[Mike Lynch]

Select Drive D: (as an example)
Execute Everything.
Copy Photos.
Paste photos in Drive E: (as an example)
Repeat the process above as time allows until all the Drives are processed.
Project completed.

Aim, Shoot, Next.