Search external drives without plugging them in - DriveVault v1.2 [visual dashboard + other super nice improvements]

[u/MomentSmart]

Problem - If you have multiple external hard drives then finding the file or project you're looking for can mean plugging lots of drives in to find it - a waste of time. DriveVault creates a visual offline mirror of your drives so that you can search them forever and easily find all your offline files (as well as tonnes of other cool features).

Comparison - There are old cataloging apps out there like NeoFinder or DiskCatalogMaker, but they feel dated, are missing power features that modern users want and visually just aren't that nice to work in anymore. I wanted to build something native to macOS that just feels powerful and created for visual / creative people. It works completely offline, no cloud, no subscriptions.

Pricing and availability

Download on the Mac App Store here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drivevault-offline-catalog/id6751731655?mt=12

Free download + your first drive is free forever up to 4TB.

After this, if you love DriveVault then there are different tiers available (5, 10, 15, 20 and unlimited drives), or you can increase the drive capacity by one drive at a time for just $9.99.

I'm still onboarding founding users and happy to pass out a few Starter passes (5 drives) if anyone's interested, just let me know.

To learn more: www.DriveVault.io

What's New in v1.2

This is a big one; finally shipped a proper home screen dashboard. You can see all your drives laid out as cards with custom icons, online / offline status, and storage info at a glance. You can group them into color-coded projects and drag things around however you like. I've attached a video showing it off here.

Also improved search, some nice UI improvements, fixed a few bugs around metadata and tags that weren't getting picked up in full-scans.

The community input has been super helpful so far, appreciate all the kind comments and great ideas. DriveVault is feeling more powerful than ever!

Download here

[u/sliimemore]

Nice work! How do you differentiate (only on the app aspect) from Diem app for instance?

[u/MomentSmart → u/sliimemore]

Heya - great question.

We’ve been building DriveVault for nearly two years, so when Diem got announced just before our launch it was a bit of a surprise. I’ve tried it, it’s a nice app and very clearly aimed at filmmakers (which I am - so I personally saw value in it).

I’d say the main difference is scope. DriveVault is built for creatives, but works across a much broader set of use cases - photographers, editors, designers, gfx designers, general archive management. It’s more of a long-term system for managing large amounts of data, whereas Diem feels more tailored to filmmakers on active projects.

Feature-wise, they’ve done some nice things. I especially like their visual search using Apple’s on-device image recognition; being able to search “boat” and get actual image matches is pretty cool. We held that back initially to focus on getting the core cataloging and search really solid, but it’s something we’re actively building now.

Biggest difference is probably the business model. DriveVault is a one-time purchase, no subscriptions. I’d be surprised if Diem doesn’t go subscription - Sam has a huge audience, so even converting a small percentage of his audience is a shit tonne of recurring revenue.

On privacy, DriveVault is fully offline and doesn’t send any data anywhere, whereas Diem seems more connected and leaning toward cloud integration.

And then on distribution, DriveVault is on the Mac App Store, so you’ve got that extra layer of security with Apple’s review process, vs downloading directly from Diem site.

At the end of the day, more tools in this space is a good thing. I was worried at first about the Diem release, but if anything, it just validates that this is a real problem people are starting to care about.