I have just purchased EagleFiler in the hope that it will improve my “paperless” office which to date has relied on Finder Folder structures and Spotlight. At present I have two types of data : Private stored on an encrypted volume and everything else. I have been experimenting with EagleFiler and have decided on an initial way of using the application. However, I would appreciate any comments from knowledgable users.
My aims.
To be able to quickly locate scanned and OCR’d PDF documents stored on my hard drive that relate to a specific topic.
Remove duplicate files.
Proposed solution.
Create two libraries; one on the secure volume the second on the normal hard drive. I seek confirmation that there is no particular advantage in having EagleFiler create a secure library on a sparse volume of its own. I did wonder if the application would store the name and location of the secure volume in its list of libraries but this does not seem to be the case so I might as well as just use my existing secure volume.
I plan to move all my files inside EagleFilers folder structure and then import them into the library. I believe that this method will allow duplicates of files to be imported. Once the import is completed I will be able to run an Applescript to locate and remove the duplicates. Is there a better way of getting rid of duplicates?
It’s not entirely clear to me what you mean by “secure volume.” Do you mean an encrypted disk image that you created yourself? Or a volume formatted with FileVault 2?
EagleFiler, via the standard Mac OS X document infrastructure, keeps track of recently opened libraries. It only shows the ones that are currently available. So, for example, your library would not appear in the menu until you connected the drive containing the library and (if applicable) unlocked it.
You could move your files into the folder structure in the Finder and use Scan for New Files. This would be relatively efficient, as it avoids copying any files, but it does allow duplicates. You could then use the Remove Duplicate Files script, which will keep the newest of each set of duplicate files.
Or, the “normal” way would be to uncheck Allow duplicate files in library in the preferences, then import via one of the other methods. Then EagleFiler would copy all the non-duplicate files into the library. Which duplicate is kept would be determined somewhat non-deterministically based on the folder structure—first file imported wins.
I wouldn’t say that one way is better. They both work, with slightly different tradeoffs.