How do I print a drive's directory structure?

March 10, 2006 7:59 AM

Is there a freeware windows application that will allow me to print the directory structure of a drive or section of a drive on my network? I have a drive at work that needs to be reorganized and it would help me if I could see directories and sub directories listed in order and in print.
posted by linklog to computers & internet (14 comments total)

I know Treesize does reports. I don't have it on my machine here but I'm pretty sure it'll do what you need.
posted by selfnoise at 8:08 AM on March 10, 2006

What is wrong with opening Explorer to a relevant view, doing an Alt-PrintScreen to copy the contents of the window to the Clipboard, and then Pasting that into Paint, from which you can print the resulting image?
posted by paulsc at 8:11 AM on March 10, 2006

It could get bulky and only does one screen's worth at a time?
posted by WCityMike at 8:11 AM on March 10, 2006

Linklog, looks like Windows comes with such an app, but on the command line. Go to Command Prompt and type 'cd [directory from which you want the tree to branch]' and hit Enter. Then type 'tree > tree.txt'. Whatever you were in, there should now be a text file called "tree.txt" which contains the directory structure you were looking for. If it prints out weird, try 'tree /a > tree.txt'.
posted by WCityMike at 8:17 AM on March 10, 2006

assuming you use windows...
You could use the command like "dir" command, pipe it to a file, and print the file. The /d switch only displays the filenames and directory names (directories in []'s). the /s switch breaks everything down and displays all of the contents of all of the subdirectories.

dir /d /s h:\ > h:\mydir.txt

Then you can use Notepad or Word to view MyDir.txt and print from that. It's a dorky way to accomplish it, but, you've already got all of the software you'd need. :)
posted by jeversol at 8:19 AM on March 10, 2006

You want the old Dos command tree

Open a command prompt window: Run cmd.exe

Type tree > c:\tree.txt to save it to a text file. If you just open that up in notepad the characters might look all garbled, but if you open it in MS Word and say to use DOS Encoding, then everything should look just fine.
posted by stopgap at 8:19 AM on March 10, 2006

WCityMike: I didn't know about tree... probably a better idea. The /f flag on tree displays all of the contents of the subfolders as well. Another viable option.

tree /f > h:\tree.txt
posted by jeversol at 8:20 AM on March 10, 2006

I use the awsome screen capture utility HyperSnap for stuff like this. You can capture a region of the screen by dragging a boundary area with your mouse, or you can get the whole listing by capturing with its autoscrolling feature (a window larger than 1 screenful will automatically scroll the capture area for you). Very cool.
posted by pretzel at 8:20 AM on March 10, 2006

On post, WCityMike beat me to it, and even included the switch for tree to use ASCII characters that won't give notepad any trouble. Also, the program defaults to listing the entire drive. To just tree from a certain directory, you have to type tree [directory name], not just run the program from that directory.
posted by stopgap at 8:24 AM on March 10, 2006

There is a utility called PrintFolder - when it's installed, you seee PrintFolder as one of the options when you right-click on a directory in Windows Explorer. Does folders and subfolders. It;s a very neat little application.

I got it from a freeware website several years ago, but I forget which one.
posted by klpage at 8:38 AM on March 10, 2006

Ignore my earlier suggestion of Treesize. I just checked and it doesn't work for your purposes. Sorry.
posted by selfnoise at 8:58 AM on March 10, 2006

www.karenware.com. Karen Kenworthy has a freeware directory printer that might work. I have not used it on a network.
posted by Raybun at 5:12 PM on March 10, 2006

SysExporter, too, is a super-useful program.
posted by oldtimey at 7:10 PM on March 10, 2006

Any serious drive reorganization effort will also be helped by SpaceMonger. You can see at a glance where all the big stuff is hiding.
posted by flabdablet at 1:30 AM on March 11, 2006