Tusk is a Mac app that automatically backs up your project folders to multiple locations and tracks where every file lives — even when your drives aren't connected.
You probably have the drawer. Four or five SSDs, a couple of older spinning drives, labels like BACKUP_2 and T7_new that meant something at the time. Somewhere in there is the Greece footage from two years ago, and the only way to find out where is the ritual: plug in a drive, wait for it to mount, squint at folder names, eject, next drive.
There are three working ways to never do that again: a disciplined manual system (labels plus a spreadsheet), a disk cataloging app that indexes each drive when you connect it, or backup software that tracks every file per destination as part of its normal job. Which one fits depends on whether you want a searchable index, or an answer to the question that actually stings: is the footage safe, and which drive is it on?
TL;DR: Manual systems decay, and disk catalogers like NeoFinder give you a searchable index that goes stale the moment you change files. Tusk covers the same ground (point it at a drive you already have and it catalogs everything on it) and keeps that index current automatically, because tracking copies is its whole job. The difference: a cataloger tells you a file exists. Tusk tells you it exists, that the copy is verified intact, and folds it into your regular backup system from that point on.
Why you lose track of drives in the first place
Nobody plans a drive drawer. It grows one purchase at a time: a drive for a big wedding, another when the first one filled up, a third because SSDs got cheap before a travel shoot. Each drive made sense on the day you bought it.
The problem is that macOS has no memory of disconnected volumes. The moment you eject a drive, Finder forgets it exists. Spotlight doesn't index unplugged drives either. All the knowledge about what's where lives in your head, and it decays fast, usually right around the time a client asks for a re-export from an 18-month-old project.
Option 1: Labels and a spreadsheet
The zero-software answer: give every drive a physical label and a matching volume name (ARCHIVE_01, not Samsung T7), then keep a spreadsheet with one row per project noting which drive it lives on.
This genuinely works, and for someone with three drives and a few projects a year it might be all you need. It costs nothing and there's no app to learn.
It fails the way all manual systems fail: it's only as current as your last update. Move a project between drives during a deadline week and forget the spreadsheet once, and the index now lies to you. A wrong index is worse than no index, because you trust it. And it can never answer the second question: even if the spreadsheet says the footage is on ARCHIVE_01, you don't know whether those files are intact until you plug the drive in and check.
Option 2: Disk cataloging apps (NeoFinder, DiskCatalogMaker)
Disk catalogers have been solving the "what's on that disk" problem since people archived to burned DVDs. You connect a drive, the app scans it, and it stores a browsable, searchable snapshot: file names, folder structure, sizes, and for media files usually thumbnails and metadata. NeoFinder and DiskCatalogMaker are the established Mac options.
When the drive is back in the drawer, you can search the catalog and see that interview_A_cam2.mov is on ARCHIVE_03. For pure findability across any kind of volume, including drives full of miscellaneous files that no backup tool manages, a cataloger is the right tool. That's worth saying clearly: if all you want is a searchable index of everything you own, this category does exactly that.
If you just need a quick, one-time answer for a drive that's currently plugged in, rather than a saved catalog database, the free disk cataloging tool covers that narrower case in your browser: file count, total size, a type breakdown, and a CSV export, with nothing uploaded.
The limits come from what a catalog is: a snapshot.
- It's only as fresh as the last scan. Add, move, or delete files and the catalog is out of date until you plug the drive back in and rescan.
- Integrity checking is manual at best. DiskCatalogMaker indexes names, sizes, and thumbnails, not file health. NeoFinder goes further: its FileCheck feature can optionally store an MD5 checksum per file and verify files against it later, but generating checksums is off by default and verification is a command you run yourself with the drive connected. Neither tool warns you on its own that a file has gone bad.
- It doesn't create copies. Knowing your only copy of a project is on
ARCHIVE_03is useful. It's also a reminder that you have exactly one copy.
Option 3: Backup software that tracks location per file
The third approach makes tracking a side effect of backing up. A backup tool that maintains copies across several drives already has to know, for every file, which destination holds a current verified copy. Expose that knowledge in the interface and the drive-drawer question answers itself.
This is the model Tusk is built on. You organize work into projects (one project maps to one folder, say 2025_Greece_Documentary), and connect backup destinations: external drives, Google Drive, or S3-compatible cloud storage. Tusk then shows a file table with the status of every file on every destination. Unplug a drive and it shows as Disconnected, but its column stays. You can still see that all 214 files of the Greece project have verified copies on ARCHIVE_01 and in your Backblaze B2 bucket, while the drive sits in the drawer.
Three properties fall out of this that neither a spreadsheet nor a catalog can offer:
- The index can't go stale. Tusk watches your project folders and syncs changes to your destinations in the background. The location data is current because keeping it current is the backup process itself.
- It tracks verified copies, not file names. Every transfer is confirmed with a BLAKE3 checksum, so "this file is on that drive" means the bytes arrived intact, not just that a name exists in an index.
- It answers the follow-up questions. Which files aren't backed up anywhere yet? Is it safe to delete this locally? A catalog was never designed to know; a backup tool has to.
Can Tusk catalog a drive you already have?
Yes. Connect the drive, choose Track an existing drive, and check off the folders you want tracked. Tusk scans them, hashes every file with a BLAKE3 checksum, and creates a verified project for each one. Nothing has to be reorganized or re-copied first, and the drive itself is never modified. From then on that drive behaves like any other Tusk backup: visible, verified, and trackable while unplugged.
The honest limits, so you can compare fairly: each folder you select becomes a project, and each project holds up to 100,000 files (the most Tusk has been tested with). A drive with 400,000 files across four shoot folders becomes four projects, not a wall, since there's no cap on how many projects you create. What Tusk still won't do is treat an entire disk as one flat, unstructured index the way NeoFinder does. If a drive is genuinely just years of loose files with no folder structure to speak of, that's still cataloger territory. Tusk is also macOS-only.
The three approaches side by side
| Labels + spreadsheet | Disk cataloger | Backup tool with tracking (Tusk) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search offline drives | If you kept it updated | Yes, as of last scan | Yes, always current |
| Stays current automatically | No | No, needs rescans | Yes, syncs in background |
| Verifies files are intact | No | Manual, opt-in (NeoFinder's FileCheck) | Yes, BLAKE3 checksum per transfer |
| Creates backup copies | No | No | Yes, that's the point |
| Tells you it's safe to delete local files | No | No | Yes, blocks deletion until copies are verified |
| Catalogs a drive you already have | No | Yes | Yes |
| Indexes arbitrary loose files with no folder structure | Yes | Yes | No, still folder/project-based |
| Cost | Free | Paid app, one-time | Paid app, one-time |
The gap between the second and third column is smaller than it used to be. If what you actually want is a searchable index of a completely unsorted drive, a cataloger still wins. If you want that same drive brought into a system that also verifies the files and keeps backing them up going forward, that used to require a cataloger plus separate backup software; now one tool does both. See the fuller comparison of disk cataloging apps for Mac if you're weighing NeoFinder or DiskCatalogMaker specifically against Tusk.
What a working setup looks like
Whichever tool you pick, the setup that survives contact with real work looks the same:
- Name drives once, permanently. Physical label matches volume name.
ARCHIVE_01throughARCHIVE_04beats four drives all namedSamsung T7. - One folder per project, everything inside it. Tracking works at the project level. Loose files on random drives are what got you here.
- Let software hold the map. In Tusk, that means creating a project per active job and assigning two or more destinations. From then on, opening the project shows where every file lives, and the file table answers the drawer question in one glance.
- Retire drives deliberately. When a drive fills up, mark it, catalog or migrate its contents, and stop half-using it. Drives with a clear role stay findable.
FAQ
macOS itself can't do this; Finder and Spotlight forget a drive the moment it's ejected. You need software that keeps a record: a disk cataloging app like NeoFinder or DiskCatalogMaker (a searchable snapshot from the last time the drive was connected) or a backup tool like Tusk that tracks every file per destination continuously, so you can see what's on a disconnected drive and whether those copies are verified.
No. Spotlight only indexes mounted volumes. Once you eject an external drive, its files disappear from Spotlight results until you reconnect it. That's the core reason drive tracking needs a dedicated tool.
A disk cataloger scans any drive and stores a searchable index of what it saw, which goes stale until the next scan. Catalogers don't create backups; integrity checking is absent in DiskCatalogMaker and manual, opt-in MD5 verification in NeoFinder. Tusk catalogs a drive the same way, point it at the drive and it indexes every file, but goes further: it verifies each file with a BLAKE3 checksum and folds the drive into your regular backup system, so the index stays current automatically instead of going stale until the next scan. The tradeoff is that Tusk works at the folder level (each folder you select becomes a tracked project), while a cataloger can index a completely unsorted, unstructured drive with no folder logic at all.
Yes. Each project's file table shows every backup destination as a column, including disconnected drives. An unplugged drive shows as Disconnected, but you can still see which of its files have verified copies on it. Plug the drive back in and Tusk reconciles any changes automatically.
Yes, this doesn't have to start with a fresh backup. Choose Track an existing drive, connect the drive, and select the folders you want tracked. Tusk hashes every file already on the drive with a BLAKE3 checksum and creates a verified project for each folder, without moving or re-copying anything on the drive itself. From then on it behaves like any other Tusk project: visible, verified, and trackable even when the drive is unplugged. Each project holds up to 100,000 files; a drive with more than that split across several folders becomes several projects, since there's no limit on how many projects you create.
Give each drive a unique, boring, permanent name and make the physical label match the volume name: ARCHIVE_01, ARCHIVE_02, and so on. Avoid names that describe contents (contents change) or model names like 'T7' (you'll own three). The name is an address, not a description; your tracking software holds the description.
For a few drives and rare changes, yes. It breaks down once projects move between drives regularly, because the spreadsheet is only as accurate as your discipline during deadline weeks. A stale index is worse than none, since you trust it. If your archive changes monthly or more, use software that updates the index automatically.