Folder view options

[Eos9]

I am currently using two external drives to store hundreds of folders containing my photographs.

The second drive is purely a back-up to the first and contains exactly the same folders and photographs and when downloading images these get copied to both drives.

It can however be confusing at times knowing which Drive I have open as the folders etc all have the same names etc.

One way around this would be to change the Look or colour of the folders of the second drive so this is instantly recognisable.

I am aware of how to do this on individual folders but as I have hundreds is there a way to apply a change of look or colour to 'All' folders on that drive without doing it individually.

Another option would appear to be to change the Background colour when opening one of the Drives and its folders.

However when I go to Finder/View/ Background the option to change the background colour is greyed out and doesn't allow me to do this. (This is despite the fact that I am in the Admin account and not general user ).

If anyone can suggest an easy way to change the look of my second drive to make it easier to distinguish when open I would be most grateful.

 

Eos

[Maniac10]

Did you try selecting all folders and coloring them from the Inspector? (select many files or folders, then go to the File menu and while pressing the command key "show information" should change to "show inspector")

 

Would it also help too see the full path in the title bar?

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true

[Eos9]

Did you try selecting all folders and coloring them from the Inspector? (select many files or folders, then go to the File menu and while pressing the command key "show information" should change to "show inspector")

 

Would it also help too see the full path in the title bar?

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true

 

Not quite sure how this would work - the trouble is If I go into the drive I see perhaps 6 folders when I initially open it.

I can select all folders and then change the colour of these 6 no problem.

The trouble is these six then have many sub-folders which in turn have sub-folders themselves. If I select all folders and change the colour it only changes the colour of the ones in the window I have open at that time and not all the sub-folders of which there are hundreds.

Its a shame I do not appear to be able to change the background colour for the windows on one of the drives as this would be a relatively easy answer.

Unfortunately for whatever reason the option is greyed out and won't allow me to do this.

[Maniac10]

Did you try that terminal command? It's quite useful.

 

To list all the folders in a drive (assuming it's HFS+) open it in a Finder window then go to the search field in the top right, type "folder" and then on the drop down list select "type:folder". At last select all those folders and color them as you wish. Make sure you're searching only in that drive as it may search in your whole computer by default.

 

EDIT: the fact that the background color is grayed out is probably because of a permissions problem, but I'm not so sure as I never had that problem. Try checking the drive with disk utility.

[3.14r2]

I'm not sure if this is the solution you are looking for, but it may in a way be helpful.

 

mucommander

 

Have a look at this screenshot: http://www.mucommander.com/screenshots/1.png

On the left pan you have one disk on the right tab you have other disk. There are other similar applications, this is the one I'm familiar with.