It really comes down to *how* you're indexing/cataloging the drive contents. I see [git-annex](https://git-annex.branchable.com) has already been mentioned, but *I* ran into problems with it trying to archive even modest amounts of data (~500K files totaling ~500G) on my Raspberry Pi test machine. Also, the FUSE interface for git-annex is rather dated and appears to no longer be actively developed. I do think looking for a [FUSE](https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse) solution is the way to go if you really are trying to view the offline data with a regular file browser. So, to that end, maybe consider writing the file structure of the cold storage drives to either a `shar` or `tar` format, maybe by co-opting the compression option of those utilities to return just a single byte (or whatever). Then you could use [archivemount](https://github.com/cybernoid/archivemount) to see that skeleton hierarchy in any file browser. And if this isn't an urgent need of yours, I'm also working on my own method of digital preservation that would support what you want (and much more) via it's own FUSE interface. My approach is very much in tune with the thinking that file metadata should be able to be manipulate even if the data it refers to is somewhere else offline. I'll likely post about it here in the next month when I've fleshed it out a bit more. 0f8dc2554520806bcdccc712e03f4e15fa81776f9449f6665b8543d2ab89e179