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A Source is 1Archive’s representation of a physical storage device (a hard drive, external drive, USB stick, or network-attached volume) that has been indexed and cataloged by the application. When you connect a drive and scan it, 1Archive reads every file on that device and records its name, location, metadata, and a thumbnail preview into your organization’s catalog. That catalog persists even after the drive is unplugged, so your whole team can browse, search, and annotate the files whether or not the drive is currently sitting on your desk.

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Connected vs. Disconnected Sources

Every Source in 1Archive is either connected or disconnected at any given moment.
  • Connected: the physical drive is plugged in and mounted on the machine running 1Archive. Its files are directly accessible; you can open, export, and work with them in full.
  • Disconnected: the drive has been removed or is otherwise unreachable. The catalog entry remains, so you can still view thumbnails, read metadata, and search the content, but you cannot open or export the original files until the drive is reconnected.
When you reconnect a drive that was previously scanned, 1Archive automatically recognizes it by its volume identifier and restores the connected state without requiring a full rescan.

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Scanned vs. Unscanned Drives

When 1Archive detects a newly connected drive that it has never seen before, the drive appears in the sidebar as unscanned. An unscanned drive is visible to you, but its contents have not yet been read into the catalog. To make a drive searchable and browsable by your team, you need to scan it. Scanning reads every file on the drive, generates previews, extracts metadata, and optionally creates AI image embeddings for semantic search. Once scanning is complete, the drive becomes a fully indexed Source.
During scan setup you can choose whether to generate image previews, video previews, and AI image indexing. Enabling AI image indexing powers AI Image Search and facial recognition on that source’s content.

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Source Groups

Source Groups are folders that let you organize Sources into a logical hierarchy. A production company might create groups like 2024 Projects, Client: Acme Corp, or Archive Drives to keep dozens of Sources manageable. Groups can be nested inside other groups, and a Source can belong to only one group at a time.

Organize by project

Group drives by shoot, client, or year so team members can navigate your catalog the same way they think about physical storage.

Nested hierarchy

Source Groups can be placed inside other Source Groups, letting you build a multi-level folder structure that mirrors how your team works.

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Visibility and Access Control

Each Source Group carries a visibility setting that determines which members of your organization can see the sources inside it.
VisibilityWho can see it
OrgEvery member of your organization
RestrictedOnly specific members you explicitly invite
When a group is set to Restricted, you add individual team members and assign them either View or Edit permissions. View members can browse and search the sources in that group. Edit members can additionally scan new drives, rename sources, and manage the group’s membership.
Visibility is set on the Source Group, not on individual drives. If you need to share only a subset of drives with a collaborator, place those drives in a dedicated restricted group.

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Roles and Permissions

Managing Sources requires appropriate permissions within your organization:
  • Owners and Admins can create, rename, and delete Source Groups, change visibility, and manage group membership.
  • Editors can scan new drives and rename existing Sources, but cannot create or configure Source Groups.
  • Viewers have read-only access to any Sources visible to them; they cannot make changes to the catalog structure.
Deleting a Source Group is only possible when the group is empty. Move or remove all Sources from a group before deleting it.