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mikelamar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 23, 2016
25
1
I'm looking for a search program in order to find some files in my external 4GB HD but I want to let me filter the data by date. I use Easy Find but it doesnt have any date filters.
Thanks
 

IngerMan

macrumors 68020
Feb 21, 2011
2,016
905
Michigan
I'm looking for a search program in order to find some files in my external 4GB HD but I want to let me filter the data by date. I use Easy Find but it doesnt have any date filters.
Thanks
I believe you can do that in Finder. At least list the files by date oldest to newest vice versus. By date created or opened or modified. I believe
 

mikelamar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 23, 2016
25
1
I've not indexed my external disk so it cannot be done like this...
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,489
16,217
California
http://www.osxbytes.com/page1/index.html?forcedownload

I like the free app iFileX for this. You can select the external drive in this dropdown then search and there are columns to sort by date in the results screen.

Screen Shot 2016-08-08 at 9.01.33 AM.png
 

mikelamar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 23, 2016
25
1
Not working for my external, I dont get any result whatever I search for...
 

mikelamar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 23, 2016
25
1
So Im looking for a program that indexes ntfs formatted drives...
 

MC6800

macrumors 6502
Jun 29, 2016
369
126
There's always the good ol' 'find' command in Terminal. Something in this form:

find /Volumes/FooDrive -cnewer ~/Desktop/MyRecentFile -print
 

mikelamar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 23, 2016
25
1
No luck at all. (Ive no idea about terminal, Im not able to use it)
What I've to do in order to find the changes that have been done to my NTFS drive during the last 2 months?
 

MC6800

macrumors 6502
Jun 29, 2016
369
126
No luck at all. (Ive no idea about terminal, Im not able to use it)
What I've to do in order to find the changes that have been done to my NTFS drive during the last 2 months?

The Terminal solution is not that hard:

Type a Command-Space followed by "term" and hit return. It should open a Terminal window.
Move that window so it's beside a Finder window (or the desktop) that shows the target drive or folder to search.
Type "cd " (c d space) and then drag-and-drop your target drive on to this window. That should cause it to type the full path name into the window. Hit return and the command will Change Directory to that target location.
Copy the following command (not including the double-quotes): "find . -newerct '2 months ago' -ls".
Paste it into Terminal, and hit return. You should see a list of files newer than two months.

You can google "unix find" for more.
 
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mikelamar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 23, 2016
25
1
The Terminal solution is not that hard:

Type a Command-Space followed by "term" and hit return. It should open a Terminal window.
Move that window so it's beside a Finder window (or the desktop) that shows the target drive or folder to search.
Type "cd " (c d space) and then drag-and-drop your target drive on to this window. That should cause it to type the full path name into the window. Hit return and the command will Change Directory to that target location.
Copy the following command (not including the double-quotes): "find . -newerct '2 months ago' -ls".
Paste it into Terminal, and hit return. You should see a list of files newer than two months.

You can google "unix find" for more.

Ok this was not hard to do and was really helpful. Now I've to ask you how I filter just the Folders and not the files. There are millions of files, in a 2TB HD.
Please tell me how to find the folders that I created during the last 2 months

PS: I need to learn how this thing called terminal works
 
Last edited:

MC6800

macrumors 6502
Jun 29, 2016
369
126
Ok this was not hard to do and was really helpful. Now I've to ask you how I filter just the Folders and not the files. There are millions of files, in a 2TB HD.
Please tell me how to find the folders that I created during the last 2 months

PS: I need to learn how this thing called terminal works

Yep, Terminal, the Unix shell, is very powerful.

You can get a manual for any Unix command using 'man' (type a space for next page, 'q' to quit):

man find

'find' has tons of switches that it calls Primaries. The two useful here are '-type d' to filter to files of type Directory (Unix for folder), and '-newerBt' which is variation of '-newerct' except it goes by creation time. We now have:

find . -type d -newerBt '2 months ago' -ls

Note that applications are actually directories, as are other packages. We can also filter them out with:

find . -name '*.app' -prune -o -type d -newerBt '2 months ago' -ls

You'll likely get a number of "Permission denied" lines in system-owned directories. You can get permission by prepending a 'sudo ' to a command and entering your password. First time you do this it will give you the J. Hector Fezandie lecture.
 
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