Visual CD is a cataloger with a lot of extra tools (such as a mass renamer tool, etc).

Why should you use a cataloger?

Studies have shown that over 90% of the data is stored on hard disks; and 2-4% of all hard disks fail each year.  Therefore, it makes sense to to protect your data by taking a backup copy on CDs or DVDs.

But once your files and folders are moved to CDs/DVDs, you face a new problem: Searching for a file/subject becomes tedious. You have to put all CDs/DVDs in your drive one by one and search them individually. You may accidentally damage your CDs/DVDs during such frequent handling, and lose your precious data permanently!

This is where a cataloger like Visual CD is needed: It allows you to browse and search CDs/DVDs (just like Windows Explorer) even when they are not in your drive.

How does it work?

Visual CD creates a tiny database of your CDs and DVDs on your hard disk. When you are using Visual CD to browse and search in your CDs/DVDs, it is actually using this database. Only when you locate a file of interest do you need the original CD/DVD. Thus the amount of handling of CDs and DVDs is cut down drastically.

Attaching comments to files and folders

Visual CD has another very important benefit: You can enter detailed comments against file, folder, CD or DVD; and later search in this field. In fact, you can create a catalog from your online content also (your hard disks and shared folders on your LAN) and attach your own metadata.

How to use Visual CD

To generate the database of CDs and DVDs, you have to let Visual CD scan all your CDs/DVDs just once: Put all your CDs and DVDs one by one in your drive and let Visual CD create a catalog of all items on each CD/DVD. Enter a few additional details (such as the marking on the CD, where it is stored, etc); and your offline database is ready.

Visual CD allows you to classify each CD/DVD in user-defined categorie (such as articles, utilities, songs, movies, photos, etc.).

Visual CD has a virtual folder tree, where each category appears as a folder. This virtual tree is very useful in browsing your CDs/DVDs in Visual CD. When you click on a folder, Visual CD shows you all CDs and DVDs placed in that folder. Just select any CD/DVD and browse its contents.

When you browse in (or search in-) Visual CD, you feel that all the CDs/DVDs are in the drive. When you want to open/run a file, insert the related CD/DVD in the drive and double-click on the file name in Visual CD. It opens (or runs) the file using its default application.

Visual CD allows you to browse and search files contained inside ZIP and RAR files. This is a powerful feature, because you don't have to guess the contents of a zip file from its name and size: you can drill right down and see what's inside!