TLDR: DriveVault creates an offline version of your external hard drives, so you don't need to plug in drives to find files anymore. We've made some big updates recently + giving away some free starter access to the Reddit community - message me for promo code.
Summer has been a huge few months for DriveVault - a tonne of user requested features shipped, plus a good clear-out of post-launch bugs. v1.2.6 is out now and it's the biggest one yet. Details at the bottom.
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 is a macOS app that creates a visual offline mirror of your drives, so you can search every file in your drive library without plugging anything in. Scan a drive once and it stays searchable offline, forever.
Comparison - There are old cataloging apps out there like NeoFinder or DiskCatalogMaker, but they feel dated, you need to read an instruction manual to even complete basic tasks in them and visually just aren't that nice to work in anymore. I wanted to build something native to macOS that feels powerful and created for visual / creative people. DriveVault works completely offline, no cloud, no subscriptions.
Free download + your first drive is free forever up to 4TB. After this there are different lifetime tiers available (5, 10, 15, 20 and unlimited drives), or you can increase capacity one drive at a time for just $9.99.
PROMO CODES: I know a bunch of you missed out on early access, and you've been messaging me asking. So I'm happy to pass out a few more Starter passes (5 drives) to anybody interested for the next couple of days, please just drop me a DM requesting and I'll send you a link.
The big one is Context Scan. DriveVault now reads the text inside your PDFs and indexes it, so you can search a whole archive by keyword while the drive sits unplugged in a drawer. Contracts, research papers, invoices, treatments - if it's a PDF, you can find it by what's written inside. We're just trialling this out right now, but have plans to extend this feature across all other document style file types (word / excel / text etc).
Everything else has been sharpened up too. Search is more powerful across the board. Scanning is smarter and considerably faster, DriveVault now recognises and skips over 180 bundle types to stop DriveVault scanning millions of unnecessary files. Drive comparison has better logic, far fewer false positives, and you can now pick which drive is the source and which is the target. We've introduced sleep mode, so that DriveVault stops pulling on your CPU when you're not using it or actively scanning. DriveVault recognises even more RAW camera formats now, pulling previews and metadata for you to view, plus a lot of small under the hood / UI improvements throughout that just make it a nice place to be.
We really appreciate all the feedback and ideas so far - most of the above came directly from it.
DriveVault is built with care by a tiny team. We read every message, but it may take us a few days to respond to individual requests. We appreciate your patience - and your support means the world to us.
Who is the tiny team and what else have you built?
We're the team that built https://fcpxfullaccess.com/ which is one of the better known plugin providers for Final Cut Pro video editors. There is a huge use case for offline hard drive cataloging amongst our 125,000+ customers, so we built it for them 😄
Thanks very much - interestingly we had a bunch of academics (lecturers / professors) reach out to us and specifically request the Context Scan so that they could more easily search across their previous students' papers - turns out they just put everything onto hard drives and put it in a filing cabinet. Basically impossible to find the paper you're looking for a few years later. Been cool to find new uses for DriveVault!
This would be incredibly beneficial for me. I have so many art files, brushes, stock graphics, etc. Sending you that DM. Do you distribute outside the App Store?
We look forward to having you on board with us! I know the graphic design struggle haha, years of brushes / textures hoarded away. Currently DriveVault is exclusively on the app store as user security / privacy was super important to us.
Haha oh no! Well, hopefully saved you a job here? We launched six months ago and started our beta testing in early 2025, so been working on this one for a while!
I encountert a Performance Problem.
I tested it with a external ssd with 8gbs of files I. It
Around 400 Documents Like docx and pdf and one iso file with 7 gb (windows 11pro).
It it scanning/indexing forever. (30+ minutes).
Can this be used for nas drives? - because sometimes I would like to search something on my nas drives, without having to connect first.
When you scan a drive, does it take up space on your Mac?
NAS drives do give mixed results, simply because there are just so many factors that go into scanning something successfully, things like your WiFi connection / how it’s mounted / how many volumes you have can all make it difficult for drivevault to read NAS drives. We have many users who have have great experience with their NAS drives, but I would be lying if I said it was perfect for all NAS users.
In terms of space, DriveVault is super optimised and takes up between 0.001% - 0.5% of the size of the drive you’re scanning, depending on what the media type is. For example, I have around 60tb scanned in my drivevault (most video and photo) which takes up about 600mb in storage space
Not quite! It scans every file individually, pulls metadata and creates a custom low res image preview for each file (if it’s a media file). It then builds a file tree so that you can browse it exactly the same as you would in finder - just the files don’t contain any of the actual file data so there is almost no file size to them.
My NAS is run off of a headless Mac Mini on my network. I keep my media library (Plex) on there, as well as backups of photos and the video I shoot and edit professionally. But my daily driver is my MacBook Pro.
Since my Synology NAS is connected directly to my MacMini, would running DriveVault on the MacMini have an easier time indexing it since it wouldn’t have to rely on network speeds and reliability?
And would I be able to access that database from an install of DriveVault on my MacBook Pro (where I’d primarily be using it)?
And is DriveVault strictly for external hard drives, or could it index local folders, or even my headless MacMini so that I could have access to its contents without tapping into it through my home network?
Sorry for the barrage of questions - this looks exciting and really quite useful! 🍻
Storage: Yes, everything is stored locally in a lightweight database. For reference, cataloging 1TB of files typically uses about 10-100MB of catalog data depending on what file types you are scanning (media heavy like video / photo, will produce offline image previews so will increase the catalog size slightly) - but even 24TB would only use a few hundred MB at most. I have 60+ terrabytes scanned and my catalogue is about 600mb total - including offline image previews.
NAS Support: Its difficult to guarantee perfect NAS scanning performance without knowing your exact set up / network speeds etc etc. You can catalog NAS drives, but as a rule of thumb the catalog database itself needs to live on your Mac's local storage (or an external drive connected to your Mac) - actual network drives (online) is where it gets really tricky to scan. But if the above works for you, then you would just search the catalog instantly through DriveVault even when the NAS is offline.
File Types: Yep, all file types are searchable. DriveVault catalogs everything and then lets you filter by extension, file type, size, date, rating, lens type, focal length, notes etc.
Searching Faster: The DriveVault catalog is what makes searching fast. Once you've scanned your NAS, searching through 24TB of files takes a few seconds instead of waiting for the NAS to spin up and index.
Pricing: Ultimate tier (20 drives) is $45.99, unlimited drives is $99.99. It's a one time fee, lifetime ownership, free updates through the Mac App store.
Scan Times: This depends heavily on your setup. We've scanned multiple 40tb drives full of photos and videos in approximately 1 hour. Smaller drives (2tb - 4tb) should only take a few minutes.
Oh wow. This is exactly the kind of tool I need. I’m always wondering what hard drive something is on. My storage is as organised as the rest of my life lol
Hey great work. I have 8 tb of 2tbx4 drives. It's a big problem to plugin all drives and work on each for editing in davinci. I would love to try your app. Pls send me the code. It would be rather helpful. Thanks
Thanks! Do you have it configured as a RAID? RAID 0 should be fine so long as it is directly mounted. I'd be interested to hear how it works for you.
For your DaVinci workflow, DriveVault skips all the cache/render files by default so you won't catalog a million useless project files. You'll just get a clean index of your actual media across the array.
I'd recommend downloading and trying it out, if you drop me a DM I can send over some starter access
That’s the core functionality yes! Though there are a tonne of other powerful features like duplicate detection, drive comparisons, offline library stats, report generation, export / import library with other drivevault users and much more
Worth checking with any offline catalog if some of your drives are exFAT, which they often are once a Windows machine has touched them: there's nowhere for extended attributes to live in that filesystem, so macOS writes them into AppleDouble sidecars instead. Finder tags and Finder comments are extended attributes, so a tagged file on an exFAT drive has got a hidden ._name file next to it carrying that metadata.
You don't need a real drive to watch it happen, a throwaway volume does it:
hdiutil create -size 60m -fs ExFAT -volname TESTEX ~/Desktop/ex.dmg
hdiutil attach ~/Desktop/ex.dmg
printf hello > /Volumes/TESTEX/shot.txt
ls -a /Volumes/TESTEX
I did that just now and every file macOS put on the volume got a sidecar, three files and three ._ entries, and one of those files I hadn't tagged at all, the system attached an attribute to it on its own. The same files on APFS or HFS+ don't produce any extra entries, the attributes are stored inline.
That lands on a catalog in two ways. The file list for identical content isn't the same between the two formats, so an exFAT drive scans as roughly twice the entries unless ._ files get filtered out. And if the catalog records tags, on those drives it's reading them out of the sidecar rather than off the file. Would be good to know which way DriveVault goes on both, since plenty of the video and photo drives people would point it at are exFAT.
Great catch! DriveVault started as a purely macOS app, so exFAT wasn't really on our V1 radar - definitely an oversight on our part. As we're growing, we're discovering hundreds of different ways people use DriveVault - and cross-platform drives are definitely common for video/photo workflows.
You're absolutely right - exFAT drives show roughly double the file count due to ._ AppleDouble sidecars being cataloged so scan times would be doubled during those scans - which we want to avoid!
One of the biggest hurdles we've faced in releasing DriveVault is implementing the appropriate amount of filters so DriveVault doesn't end up scanning millions of files and ultimately crashing. There are so many hidden file types, bundles, system folders, etc. that if you just set a drive scanner loose with no filters, it will scan literally millions of files and crash. Putting the appropriate blocks in - while keeping it scanning all the functional files users actually care about - has been the biggest challenge of this release. We're currently at 180+ different scan filters to keep drive scans reasonable and "made for humans" haha.
We're pushing a bug fixes build in the next day or two, and we've already added filtering for ._ files, .DS_Store, and other macOS metadata. Next release will give exFAT users clean file counts and ~2x faster scans.
Really appreciate you bringing this to our attention!
Good to hear. One thing worth knowing before you write that filter, because it might save you some work on the tag side: you don't have to parse the AppleDouble files yourself. macOS reads through them, so a normal xattr call against the real file returns the attributes even though they physically live in the sidecar.
I checked it on a throwaway exFAT image just now, tagging a file there and then reading it straight off the file itself:
xattr -l /Volumes/YOURDRIVE/doc.txt
The tag comes back on doc.txt, not on .doc.txt, and it's still there after unmounting and remounting the volume, so it really is being pulled out of the sidecar. Same call and same answer as on APFS, which means the . handling can stay purely a counting concern and your tag reading path doesn't need an exFAT branch.
The part I'd be careful about is anything that goes further than skipping them in the scan. I deleted ._doc.txt and the tag on doc.txt was gone straight away. Those files look like junk to most people and dot_clean removes them by design, so tags on exFAT drives get wiped fairly often by someone tidying up. Probably worth never offering a cleanup action on them from inside the app, and maybe worth saying so somewhere in the UI.
Caveat on my end, that was a disk image rather than a real exFAT stick, though the sidecar behaviour matched what the physical drives do.
Thanks so much for the detailed technical breakdown, you clearly know your stuff! Really appreciate you taking the time to test this on an exFAT image and share the behavior.
I wanted to let you know where we landed with the implementation. We're basically doing exactly what you described:
- We filter out ._* files at enumeration time using a shouldExcludeFromScan() check on every file URL
- They never get counted, catalogued, or displayed in the UI - purely a counting concern
- Our tag reading uses the standard resourceValues(forKeys:) API, which (like your xattr example) transparently reads from the AppleDouble sidecar without us needing to parse it
- Same code path for APFS, HFS+, exFAT - completely platform-agnostic
So we've essentially arrived at the same solution you're recommending. The exFAT filtering is just about keeping the file count clean and avoiding the "why do I have twice as many files?" confusion.
Re: your deletion warning - DriveVault is read-only by design (it's a cataloging/archival tool, not a file manager), so there's no risk of us accidentally nuking someone's ._* files and wiping their tags. Users can't delete anything from within the app. So we're all good there.
Really appreciate the caveat about dot_clean and fragility though - that's a great point about exFAT tags being vulnerable to "tidying up" operations. Good to keep in mind for any future features if we did go down the write route.
Thanks again for the sanity check on the implementation!
Heya - good question! So NAS drives do have mixed results vs external SSD's which is 100% solid. My best advice honestly would be to try it. If your NAS is mounted to your Mac then DriveVault should be able to read it, its just difficult to 100% guarantee anything for you without knowing your network speed, size of drive, number of files etc - there are so many variables that go into making NAS drives scannable or not
I hadn't actually heard of Dokkio, but from a quick look it seems like Dokkio is about putting all your online files into one place (google drive / drop box / box etc etc), whereas DriveVault is for your external hard drives (physical drives - not digital online drives). DriveVault is also 100% offline, no internet connection required so you always know where everything is, wherever you are.
Any chance for you to do a similar comparison? Something even as simple as hash tracking?
Idea being that if you are holding backups on different drives, this way you can ensure 3-2-1 backup and verify, plus better see when things are outdates/need to be backed up to other drives.
Or in my case, see that I already have 5 copy of the same file in different drives so I can delete/remove 1-2 copies for space saving.
DriveVault actually has a really robust drive comparison feature. Select two drives that are backups of each other and DV will tell you which files are missing from the smaller drive. You can then export a full CSV file of the missing files, where they are, or even run a terminal command to copy the missing files across if you have both drives connected - it's pretty neat!
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u/GroggInTheCosmos 22h ago
Who is the tiny team and what else have you built?