Windows: Creating a disk catalog for your external hard drive

On my windows machine, I wanted to create a disk catalog that I could use to see the movies I already had watched or downloaded from my provider.

1. I found that the easiest way to do this is by creating a text file which has a list of all files on the external drive from that directory and saving that info to a file.
2. When needed, search the text file which is used as a catalog.

Creation of the catalog is very easy. For your destination path (on the external drive),  do the following:

1. From the windows start menu, type and search for "cmd"
2. This will launch the command window.
3. In the command window run the following command:

DIR "F:\path\to\dir" /s > "C:\List.txt"

This command assumes that F:\path\to\dir is the directory which you are planning to list. The catalog file is the C:\List.txt file which can be read and searched like a normal text file.

For making a catalog from any directory use something like this in a .bat file:

DIR /s > "Catalog.txt"