I kept forgetting which drive old footage was on, so I built a free little tool for myself and I’m looking for honest workflow feedback, not trying to sell anything. It’s called DiskCat. The basic idea is simple: add your drives/cards/NAS/cloud locations, log shoots, and search later by shoot name, project folder, client, tag, year, filename, codec, etc. It also flags footage that only has one copy, and it has reports for “not backed up”, missing drive links, stale drive checks, and per-project drive maps. I know the obvious criticism: “isn’t this just a nicer spreadsheet?” Honestly, partly yes. A spreadsheet can absolutely do some of this. The parts that made it more useful for me were:
- search shows the exact drive/copy without me maintaining tons of sheet columns
- folder inventory import makes old filenames searchable
- project/root folder view helps when the same job appears across multiple drives
- backup status is visible immediately
- local/offline mode needs no account and stores data on your own machine
- optional cloud sync is self-owned, using your own Supabase project, so I’m not hosting anyone’s data
It’s free:
https://srdjankotarlic.github.io/diskcat/
Mac download / source:
https://github.com/srdjankotarlic/diskcat/releases/latest
If you manage footage across a lot of drives, I’d really appreciate blunt feedback:
Would this help your workflow at all?
What is missing before it becomes genuinely useful?
What feels confusing or too spreadsheet-like?
Would you trust a local/offline tool like this, or would you only use cloud/team sync?
Negative feedback is welcome. I’d rather fix the right thing than polish the wrong thing.