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Find the files, drivers, tracks, films, singers etc on your disc
collection at the click of a button. Protect your investment.
1: Start by selecting the device ID. If you have more than one
DC300 connected this is where you'd select which one you're
currently working with. 2: With this done you then assign a slot
number by typing it in or by clicking "Empty Slots" and choosing
from the list of available unoccupied slot numbers.
3: Next you select a disk category. Each of the categories can
be edited with a double click or you can create a new category
by simply typing it in the box. Next insert the name in "Title"
box and if required the "Barcode" box and click "OK" and you're
done. 4: Double click the entry to align the carousel and lower
the collection arm and place the CD on it ready to be ingested.
Barcode is best used for software serial numbers
Repeat the procedure until all your disks are logged and you're
done. You don't have to put all you software discs together,
music discs together as when you search the database will list
them irrespective of where they are in the database.
Another nice touch is the ability to get the directory data
directly from each disk (field 1 "Content") by placing it in
your chosen drive and clicking "Get". One more right click and
you can get the all the sub-directories, files and folders too,
and if this isn't enough all the detected files and folders are
fully searchable! The field below this (field 2 "Remark") is a
free form data entry box where you can add just about any
remarks you want, like who you've lent the disk to or where the
No CD patch is located and so on and again all the data in this
field is searchable.
The search function is actually pretty impressive. You can do a
full search by title, Barcode, Content or remark and by machine
ID.
So what I'm saying is if you know you've got a file on one of
your CDs hidden two levels deep and called "me drunk" you can
type it in, find it and eject it in literally seconds. How handy
is that? And it doesn't stop there. If you have a music CD and
you want to record the track details you can click "Get CDDB"
which, provided you're connected to the 'Net, connects to
www.freedb.org, grabs the track info and then adds it to the
remarks field (below). And of course as I keep saying it's all
searchable.
The only oversight here is that once the track info appears in
the "Get CDDB" window (below) there are no clues about what you
should do with it. It's only by clicking "X" and closing the
window that you're asked if you want to overwrite the
information whereby selecting "Yes" adds the data to the
"Remarks" field. And if you want to personalise things even
further you can associate scans of your disk sleeve, the disk
itself or even your own artwork with each disk in the database
and thumb through them at your leisure. And if you've got a lot
of disks you need to remove from the DC300 in one session you
can use the "Multi Selection Eject" function where you set the
disks you want out and it cycles through and ejects them waiting
about 6 seconds at each for you to remove it. A nice idea but
one that probably doesn't save a whole lot of time over doing
them individually. One thing that might make this function more
useful is if the titles chosen remained selected even after this
window is closed so you could run it again to put the disks back
when you've done. You'd need a "Clear" button to deselect all
your selected titles ready for a new session but I doubt that's
much of a programming challenge. Another minor gripe is that
although you tune the look and feel of the database software to
your liking by selecting things like language, font, font colour
and so on the settings are global. It'd be kind of nice to
assign a specific font or font colour to individual categories
or disk types to make them easier to locate by eye. And although
the physical security of the DC300 may be a little lackluster
it's good to see DACAL have included a password function with
the database to keep prying eyes away from your collection.Fire
it up with the password set and your greeted with a colourful
refusal.
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get the full dc300 review click the link above.
How to move the Dacal dc300 database when changing computers,
backing up info etc. Please follow the steps to move database
from your old computer to a new computer.
1) (New computer), Install CD Library software to new computer.
2) (Old computer), go to C:\Program Files\CD Library
3) (Old computer), there are 8 folders and 2 files you need to
move from old computer to new computer.
8 folders: dbf, dbfbak, CdInfo, CdInfbak, Remark, Remakbak,
Preview, DBFEmpty
2 files: dbid.txt and Cdtype.txt
4) Copy these 8 folders and 2 files to new computer C:\Program
Files\CD Library
5) Connect CD Library machine(s) to new computer.
6) Open software and use them.
