WinCatalog Light

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on October 12, 2010

WinCatalog Light is a free disk cataloging tool that scans and catalogs your system's disks or files. You can use the listings it creates to quickly find specific files in your disk collection without having to insert a bunch of removable disks and search them one by one. It also extracts file descriptions and automatically fetches MP3 song names online. It can scan any storage device that Windows can access.

WinCatalog Light's interface is a slightly smaller version of the familiar Windows app style: File menu, icon-based toolbar, left-hand navigation panel, and main window. With a pretty good idea of what WinCat does and how its layout functioned, we clicked Add Volume, and the Add Volume dialog appeared. It includes selectable options for extracting descriptions for html, mp3, and other files; for scanning archives contents; and for retrieving Audio CD track names online. We clicked OK, and WinCatalog quickly scanned the volume, displaying the contents as a tree view in the left-hand pane and as a customizable folder view in the main window. There's an option to add comments to files or folders, edit keywords. There is even a Contacts List, though some of the tools, such as the report generator and duplicates search tool, are only available by upgrading to the pay version, as you're urged now and then. It's always a disappointment to see software present features that don't work or that urge you to buy something, but WinCat Light offers most of the for-pay version's functionality, including its main feature, so we really can't complain. What it does, it does well.

WinCatalog Light earns our recommendation as a basic, easy-to-use disk cataloging utility that offers some useful extras.

Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of WinCatalog Light 2.92. The trial version lets you work with no more than five volumes.