Once Windows became widespread, MS-DOS programs like Magellan lost their usefulness. It even had “viewers” allowing you to peek inside the file without actually opening it in its native software. If you could remember a phrase or text string, Magellan would show you a list of the files that contained that text string.

Magellan scanned your hard drive (back in the days when a really big hard drive might be 5-10 megabytes) and produced a searchable index.

People who remember the dawn of the personal computer era may remember a Lotus Development Corp. That’s where file indexing and cataloguing software comes into the picture.

This all works out fine if I can associate some file with a client, but if I’m looking for a file with a specific content or text sequence in the name, and can’t remember the client it was associated with, the system breaks down. If I produce video for the client, there is a client-named folder on one of the external hard drives I use for video or audio projects, and the individual projects have subfolders there. In each client folder there are subfolders, usually named for a year, and all the documents for that client for that year go into the appropriate folder. Every client has a folder named for the client. I am pretty compulsive about file and folder naming on my computer.

Wincatalog 2019 review