The problem
The drive you need is the one on the shelf.
An archive is only useful if you can find things in it. Twenty drives on a shelf, and the only way to know which one holds the January 2019 job is to plug them in one after another and hope you remember what the folder was called.
Meanwhile the same rushes sit in three copies across four disks, and nothing tells you. You buy another drive instead of reclaiming one you already own.
The answer
Catalogue once. Search with nothing plugged in.
Archivo walks a volume and turns it into a fast, browsable index. Once a disk has been catalogued you search it without connecting it, without a server, and without a network. The database lives on your machine, compressed, and answers instantly.
Duplicate detection then tells you which files exist in more than one place, so you can free a disk rather than order the next one.
How it works
One index, every disk you own.
Point Archivo at a volume and it records the full tree: names, sizes, dates, paths. The disk can go back on the shelf the moment the scan finishes. Add the next one, and the next, and they all land in the same searchable index.
What is in it
The rest of the toolbox.
Fast volume scan
Any volume becomes a browsable file index: names, sizes, dates and full paths, recorded in one pass.
Offline search
Search across every catalogued disk at once, with none of them connected and no network in sight.
Duplicate detection
Find the files that exist in more than one place, and reclaim a drive instead of buying one.
Compressed database
The whole catalogue stays small enough to sit on your working machine and to be backed up with everything else.
Self-contained
No install, no dependencies, no sign-up. It runs from wherever you put it.
Free download
Get it.
Apps are safe but unsigned. If macOS blocks it or says “damaged”, run in Terminal:sudo xattr -cr /Applications/archivo.app