Tusk is a Mac app that automatically backs up your project folders to multiple locations and tracks where every file lives — even when your drives aren't connected.
You probably have the drawer. Four or five SSDs, a couple of older spinning drives, labels like BACKUP_2 and T7_new that meant something at the time. Somewhere in there is the Greece footage from two years ago, and the only way to find out where is the ritual: plug in a drive, wait for it to mount, squint at folder names, eject, next drive.
There are three working ways to never do that again: a disciplined manual system (labels plus a spreadsheet), a disk cataloging app that indexes each drive when you connect it, or backup software that tracks every file per destination as part of its normal job. Which one fits depends on whether you want a searchable index, or an answer to the question that actually stings: is the footage safe, and which drive is it on?
TL;DR: Manual systems decay, and disk catalogers like NeoFinder give you a searchable index that goes stale the moment you change files. A backup tool that tracks per-file location, like Tusk, keeps the answer current automatically: it knows which drive holds which files, whether that drive is plugged in or sitting in a drawer, because tracking copies is its whole job.
Why you lose track of drives in the first place
Nobody plans a drive drawer. It grows one purchase at a time: a drive for a big wedding, another when the first one filled up, a third because SSDs got cheap before a travel shoot. Each drive made sense on the day you bought it.
The problem is that macOS has no memory of disconnected volumes. The moment you eject a drive, Finder forgets it exists. Spotlight doesn't index unplugged drives either. All the knowledge about what's where lives in your head, and it decays fast, usually right around the time a client asks for a re-export from an 18-month-old project.
Option 1: Labels and a spreadsheet
The zero-software answer: give every drive a physical label and a matching volume name (ARCHIVE_01, not Samsung T7), then keep a spreadsheet with one row per project noting which drive it lives on.
This genuinely works, and for someone with three drives and a few projects a year it might be all you need. It costs nothing and there's no app to learn.
It fails the way all manual systems fail: it's only as current as your last update. Move a project between drives during a deadline week and forget the spreadsheet once, and the index now lies to you. A wrong index is worse than no index, because you trust it. And it can never answer the second question: even if the spreadsheet says the footage is on ARCHIVE_01, you don't know whether those files are intact until you plug the drive in and check.
Option 2: Disk cataloging apps (NeoFinder, DiskCatalogMaker)
Disk catalogers have been solving the "what's on that disk" problem since people archived to burned DVDs. You connect a drive, the app scans it, and it stores a browsable, searchable snapshot: file names, folder structure, sizes, and for media files usually thumbnails and metadata. NeoFinder and DiskCatalogMaker are the established Mac options.
When the drive is back in the drawer, you can search the catalog and see that interview_A_cam2.mov is on ARCHIVE_03. For pure findability across any kind of volume, including drives full of miscellaneous files that no backup tool manages, a cataloger is the right tool. That's worth saying clearly: if all you want is a searchable index of everything you own, this category does exactly that.
The limits come from what a catalog is: a snapshot.
- It's only as fresh as the last scan. Add, move, or delete files and the catalog is out of date until you plug the drive back in and rescan.
- Integrity checking is manual at best. DiskCatalogMaker indexes names, sizes, and thumbnails, not file health. NeoFinder goes further: its FileCheck feature can optionally store an MD5 checksum per file and verify files against it later, but generating checksums is off by default and verification is a command you run yourself with the drive connected. Neither tool warns you on its own that a file has gone bad.
- It doesn't create copies. Knowing your only copy of a project is on
ARCHIVE_03is useful. It's also a reminder that you have exactly one copy.
Option 3: Backup software that tracks location per file
The third approach makes tracking a side effect of backing up. A backup tool that maintains copies across several drives already has to know, for every file, which destination holds a current verified copy. Expose that knowledge in the interface and the drive-drawer question answers itself.
This is the model Tusk is built on. You organize work into projects (one project maps to one folder, say 2025_Greece_Documentary), and connect backup destinations: external drives, Google Drive, or S3-compatible cloud storage. Tusk then shows a file table with the status of every file on every destination. Unplug a drive and it shows as Disconnected, but its column stays. You can still see that all 214 files of the Greece project have verified copies on ARCHIVE_01 and in your Backblaze B2 bucket, while the drive sits in the drawer.
Three properties fall out of this that neither a spreadsheet nor a catalog can offer:
- The index can't go stale. Tusk watches your project folders and syncs changes to your destinations in the background. The location data is current because keeping it current is the backup process itself.
- It tracks verified copies, not file names. Every transfer is confirmed with a BLAKE3 checksum, so "this file is on that drive" means the bytes arrived intact, not just that a name exists in an index.
- It answers the follow-up questions. Which files aren't backed up anywhere yet? Is it safe to delete this locally? A catalog was never designed to know; a backup tool has to.
The honest limits, so you can compare fairly: Tusk tracks the files inside its projects, not arbitrary loose files scattered across old drives. It won't retroactively index a 2019 drive full of unsorted downloads the way NeoFinder will. It's also macOS-only and built around project-based work like footage and photo libraries.
The three approaches side by side
| Labels + spreadsheet | Disk cataloger | Backup tool with tracking (Tusk) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search offline drives | If you kept it updated | Yes, as of last scan | Yes, always current |
| Stays current automatically | No | No, needs rescans | Yes, syncs in background |
| Verifies files are intact | No | Manual, opt-in (NeoFinder's FileCheck) | Yes, BLAKE3 checksum per transfer |
| Creates backup copies | No | No | Yes, that's the point |
| Tells you it's safe to delete local files | No | No | Yes, blocks deletion until copies are verified |
| Covers loose files outside projects | Yes | Yes | No, projects only |
| Cost | Free | Paid app, one-time | Paid app, one-time |
The combination worth considering: a cataloger for legacy drives you'll never reorganize, and location-aware backup for the projects you actively care about. They solve overlapping but different problems, and neither replaces the other completely.
What a working setup looks like
Whichever tool you pick, the setup that survives contact with real work looks the same:
- Name drives once, permanently. Physical label matches volume name.
ARCHIVE_01throughARCHIVE_04beats four drives all namedSamsung T7. - One folder per project, everything inside it. Tracking works at the project level. Loose files on random drives are what got you here.
- Let software hold the map. In Tusk, that means creating a project per active job and assigning two or more destinations. From then on, opening the project shows where every file lives, and the file table answers the drawer question in one glance.
- Retire drives deliberately. When a drive fills up, mark it, catalog or migrate its contents, and stop half-using it. Drives with a clear role stay findable.
FAQ
macOS itself can't do this; Finder and Spotlight forget a drive the moment it's ejected. You need software that keeps a record: a disk cataloging app like NeoFinder or DiskCatalogMaker (a searchable snapshot from the last time the drive was connected) or a backup tool like Tusk that tracks every file per destination continuously, so you can see what's on a disconnected drive and whether those copies are verified.
No. Spotlight only indexes mounted volumes. Once you eject an external drive, its files disappear from Spotlight results until you reconnect it. That's the core reason drive tracking needs a dedicated tool.
A disk cataloger scans any drive and stores a searchable index of what it saw, which goes stale until the next scan. Catalogers don't create backups; integrity checking is absent in DiskCatalogMaker and manual, opt-in MD5 verification in NeoFinder. Tusk tracks files as part of backing them up: it shows per-file, per-destination status that stays current automatically, verifies every copy with a BLAKE3 checksum, and blocks local deletion until verified backups exist. The tradeoff is that Tusk only tracks files inside its projects, while a cataloger indexes anything.
Yes. Each project's file table shows every backup destination as a column, including disconnected drives. An unplugged drive shows as Disconnected, but you can still see which of its files have verified copies on it. Plug the drive back in and Tusk reconciles any changes automatically.
Give each drive a unique, boring, permanent name and make the physical label match the volume name: ARCHIVE_01, ARCHIVE_02, and so on. Avoid names that describe contents (contents change) or model names like 'T7' (you'll own three). The name is an address, not a description; your tracking software holds the description.
For a few drives and rare changes, yes. It breaks down once projects move between drives regularly, because the spreadsheet is only as accurate as your discipline during deadline weeks. A stale index is worse than none, since you trust it. If your archive changes monthly or more, use software that updates the index automatically.