User guide

Installation

To install this program just create a folder, usually in the Programs directory, and copy there the two files: CDCollector.exe, the application executable, and CDCollector.chm the user guide. The program will create a third file, CDCollector.ini, in the same directory to store the application settings. The license key is stored in this file so you should never delete this file or you'll have to repeat the product activation procedure.

Creating a new disk index

To create a new disk index select the command File-New disk index or click the corresponding button, the program scans the disk currently in the CD drive, then asks to choose the CD label, burn date and description and finally asks where to save the disk index file.

Creating a new collection

To create a new collection select the command File-New collection or click the corresponding button.

Inserting a CD in the collection

To add a CD to the current opened collection select command Edit-Insert disk and then select one or more disk index files you have created before.

Removing a CD from the collection

To remove a CD from a collection select the CD in the list and select the Edit-Remove disk command.

The browse view

In the browse view you can sort the disks list and the files list respect to a field by double clicking the corresponding column header. You can also change the widths of the columns and the position of the columns by dragging the column headers.

Copying or opening items

When an item is selected in the browse or in the search panel you can copy it or open it by selecting command Edit-Copy or Edit-Open from the menu or Copy or Open from the popup menu which appears doing right click on the item.

When asked to copy or open an item the program first checks the presence of the right CD in the CD drive and eventually asks to insert the CD with the given label.

If the item is going to be copied the program asks to choose the destination location and then it performs the copy.

If the item is going to be opened the program launches the application which has been associated to that file type in the system, or calls the Windows Explorer to open a folder, or launches the program if the file is an executable.

Viewing an item properties

When an item is selected in the browse or in the search panel you can view its properties by calling the command View-properties. The program shows a window with the basic item properties. These properties include the type of item , i.e disk, folder or file, the item label, the file size and the file dates of creation, access and modify, the file path of the item assuming the CD was in the CD drive.

Viewing the collection properties

Collection properties are showed when the command View-Properties is called with no item under selection. Collection properties include title, file path, file size, file dates, description.

Searching for items in the collection

To search for items switch to the search panel, insert the search parameters and click the Search button. While searching the search button shows the Stop label and the animation is running. You can stop the search using the button. Every new search clears the results and the search parameters.

Search parameters

The search parameters include the words that must be in the file or folder title, the option for case sensitive or case insensitive comparison, the option of searching into one CD only or into the whole collection, the option for searching for files, folders or both.

The search results view

In the search results list the program shows the type of the item, its label and its full path.

You can change the widths of the columns in the search results view.

Once the search has stopped you can sort the search results respect to one of the fields by double clicking the column headers of the list.

Setting the CD drive letter

The program always looks for CD in a certain drive of your computer. You can select which drive to use by the Settings panel available by the command Tools-Settings.

Other settings

Other settings are whether to open or not the last opened collection, whether to eject the disk after completing a scan, whether to remove the read only attributes form files and folders when copying files or folders from a CDRom, and the date format for date input and display.

How to organize the CD index files

First choose a directory of your hard disk where to store all these files, then create the CD indexes, one for disk, and give them unique titles. The title of the disk index file should be equal to the label written on the CD surface or the CD box. You can put all the index files files in the same folder or you can create more subfolders to group the files. Of course with the file system you can group these files in one way only.

When you have created the disk index files you can define the collections. Each collection will be a file which contains the relative paths of some index files.

The same disk can appear in more than one collection. You can save the collection files in the base directory chosen before.
For example you can create a collection with all the disks just to see how many data you have got in total, and separate collections for different purposes, like backups, music, etc...

Once you have created the index and the collection files you can still modify some data in them, the description and the burn date for index files, only the description for collection files.

Finally you can make backup copies of this file set simply by copying the whole base directory.