best way to store folder structure?

[rnd me]

ok, i just spoke with the man, and he allowed me to give some details. please pardon the obfuscation.

a company wants a record of all files on a workstation for a given point in time, a snapshot. this "image" must be made during shift change, giving little more than 5 mins for *several* workstations to report.

the quick harvest is CPU and disk intensive, and as such interfers with the machines usability during the procedure. it cannot be done in the background because, again, they want a "snapshot" at a known time. (after the employee leaves)

this info is then uploaded to a remote (wan) server. the DSL in use at the site should not be brought to a standstill during this upload, so efficiency is paramount.

it seems like a simple enough process, but there are obviously a lot of restrictions and complications to the problem.

i can image the HD in our goal of 2 mins w/ FSO, but sending every workstations data in the remaining 3 proves elusive.
scrapping remote FSO objects, we talked them down to just a file name.

i also said this would be "no problem", so needless to say, i want to solve the problem.

i need to know the most space-efficient, computationally friendly manner in which to store short heirarchical string names and relations.

any advice?