CD / DVD Spindle Search

Search your CDs and DVDs without putting them in the drive.

Spindle Search™ is a plugin for Google Desktop Search. Google introduced the Desktop Search tool because a lot of users complained about locating files on their hard-disks. GDS runs in the background, quietly scanning your files. Then, whenever you wish to locate a particular file, it uses this index to search and find your files quickly.

However, Google Desktop will only search files that reside on your local hard-disk. A common problem that some users have is locating files stored on CDs or DVDs that are archived away in a cabinet or a spindle. What makes this worse is, you need to pop each CD or DVD into the drive one-by-one, until you find what you are looking for.

Well, no more. Spindle Search™ lets you catalog your disks and then sends the information to Google’s search tool. Now you can simply issue a search request as you would for a regular file, and your archived files will show up as well. When you click on the result, Spindle Search will tell you exactly which disk your file is on, as well as details about where it is kept (you need to provide this information when you add the disk to your catalog.)

Version History

• 2005-07-14
  • v1.2.2 released.
  • Bug Fix: Parse dates correctly in non-English locales.
  • Bug Fix: Automatically refresh the list of drives after each drive is indexed. Also add the ability to refresh this list manually.
  • Bug Fix: When indexing C:\ (or the drive where Spindle Search is installed), index entire drive, not just current folder and below.
• 2005-04-02
  • v1.2.1 released.
  • Zips up the catalog before saving it to disk. Improved error-handling with GDS errors.
• 2005-03-31
  • v1.2 released.
  • Fixed a major bug in the handling of files containing special characters. Now each URI is URL-encoded before being added to the index. Added features to save/load from catalog files.
• 2005-03-23
  • v1.1 released.
  • Major refactoring; the GDS API is now the .Net Wrapper for GDS.
• 2005-03-16
  • v1.0.1 released.
  • Added two new buttons to the View File dialog: “Open File” and “Open Folder”.
  • Signed both the assembly as well as the Google Interop Library with strong names.
• 2005-03-15
  • v1.0 released.

License & Acknowledgements

Thanks to Google for an excellent desktop search tool, and especially so for keeping the API open and accessible to us developers.

This program is distributed under the GNU General Public License. This means that source code for this program is available free of cost. You are also free to make any modifications and enhance the program, subject to the restriction that any such modifications must be made available free to others. Share and enjoy …

Spindle Search™ is a trademark of Manas Tungare.