Drives & connections
The Drives page
The cross-project view: every drive Tusk knows about, plus a search panel for finding files across drives by metadata.
The Drives page lives in the sidebar between Projects and Search. It's a single view that shows every drive Tusk has ever connected to, regardless of whether it's currently plugged in.
What each drive entry shows
- Drive label: the volume name as macOS saw it the last time it was mounted. Editable in the drive details panel.
- Connection state: green dot for connected, gray for disconnected. Disconnected drives also show “Last seen X ago.”
- Drive type: external drive, SD card, internal drive, NAS share. Different icons for each.
- Used by: a list of projects that currently use this drive as a backup destination.
- Capacity and usage: only when the drive is connected. Tusk can't poll capacity on a drive that isn't mounted.
Screenshot
Drives page in Tusk showing 4-5 drive entries: one connected SSD (green dot, capacity bar visible), one disconnected HDD ('Last seen 3 days ago'), one connected SD card with a card icon, one Google Drive entry, and one disconnected drive with a banner indicating files are tracked on it.
alt: The Drives page with several connected and disconnected drives
Click a drive for details
Click any drive in the list to open its detail panel. The panel shows:
- Drive identity: label, volume UUID, type. Edit the in-Tusk label here.
- Files on this drive: a count and total bytes of the files Tusk has tracked on this drive, broken down by project. Useful for understanding what you'd lose if the drive failed.
- Last connected timestamp: when Tusk last saw this drive online.
- Re-verify all: forces a fresh stat pass on every file Tusk expects to find on the drive (only available when connected).
- Forget drive: removes the drive from Tusk's index. Use only after physically destroying the drive or repurposing it permanently.
Search across drives
The Drives page also surfaces a search panel that lets you find files by drive metadata: “files on drive WeddingArchive_2024,” “files only on this drive,” “projects using this drive.” This is particularly useful when you're trying to decide whether you can repurpose a drive you haven't plugged in for two years.
SD cards vs hard drives
Tusk classifies SD cards separately from hard drives in the Drives overview. The icon and label make it easy to tell them apart. Most SD cards in your list will be source drives (you offloaded from them), not destinations. Once you've verified the offload completed and you've reformatted the card, you can Forget it from the Drives page.
Use the Drives page when planning a hardware change
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