Splitting up a project in a very large directory

[Jolene Smith]

Hello,

Is it possible to use filters to split up projects in a very large directory? I've got a very large directory with thousands of sub-directories and it's proving to be very challenging to scan without interruption. I'm not able to change the file structure. If it's not possible to split up a directory via filters, is there another way to do it?

Thanks very much,

Jolene Smith

Virginia Department of Historic Resources

[ch...@weareavp.com]

Hello Jolene,

Thanks for your question. There is no way within Fixity user interface to effectively address the scenario you have described. I do have a thought on how you might address this in a back-end sort of way though.

1. The first step would be to generate the list of file paths. There are a number of ways you could do this ranging from using command line commands to using applications like Karen's Power Tools.

2. After you have your list of file paths for the directories that you want to scan, you can break them into groups. For each group you can create a list of filepaths using a semicolon as the separator. Note that you will need to know the correct file path syntax to use based on how Fixity documents it. See step 4 regarding this.

3. The next step would be to create and run a Fixity project for at least one sub-directory that you will want to scan. The purpose of this step is to generate a file in the Fixity Reports History folder. Once this file is created you can open it up and at the top you will see the file path for the directory that you just scanned. You will notice that the syntax is the file path followed by a semicolon.

4. Next, paste in your list of file paths separated by semicolons being sure to follow the same file path syntax path as existed for the directory that was in the original project that you created.

5. Once completed, save this file and return to the Fixity application. Under preferences, go to Import Project, navigate to the file you just created, and import it giving it a new logical name.

You could do this for each group of sub-directories you want to scan in order to create several projects which could be scheduled independently so you could tackle it in smaller chunks.

Let me know what you think about giving that a try and how well it works for you.

Thanks!

Chris

[Jolene Smith]

Thank you for your response!

This almost gets me where I need to be, but not quite. New directories are created regularly within the primary directory, so the list of files would be immediately out of date. I'm still looking in to other command line ways to do this, but I appreciate your suggestion. I'll keep exploring.

Thanks again,

Jolene