Windows 7: Indexing network share locations

Hi,



I am running Windows 7 64-bit on my main PC. I also have a fileserver running Fedora 9/Samba that houses all our documents, video, music, and pictures. I have mapped network drives to these locations. I have no issues at all accessing the remote shares, either through UNC path, or through the networked drives.

When I go to the indexing configuration, the mapped drives do not appear as a target to pick for indexing. Also, I can't add these folders to the respective library folders, because I get an error indicating that the location is not indexed. So I'm hoping that if I can index these locations, I can then add them to my library.

Thoughts?
-Kevin

Hello Ktulu05

To index a network folder or drive, you must right-click on it first and select "Always Available offline".

Then it can be indexed, and added to libraries as well.

Simply right-click a folder, click "always available offline" and after sync finishes (or meanwhile) you can add it to the Libraries, no need to tamper with indexing options.

Hope it helps

Hi ktulu05, and welcome to the Seven Forums,

The way I understand things with the library in the Beta of Windows 7 at present only those files indexed with MS's Search 4.0 will show as "indexed". This is available for XP, Vista, and Server 2003. I am certain that as windows 7 approaches release other systems will provide the correct indexing, but at the moment I am unaware of a workaround, (of course if anyone does know please post back)

Hmm...then again, you might not want to synchronize the whole contents of your network files , otherwise you could just copy them locally

Another workaround is to simply index the network files...To do that, I found there's a patch that M$ has released for Windows Vista that does this and works for Windows 7 too.

However, I even found another easier how-to:

To add a non-indexed UNC as a library to Windows 7 Beta:

Hope it helps even better

I found the UNC patch that is supposed to allow indexing to extend to UNC paths, installed it, and rebooted. The indexing options module in the Control Panel doesn't show any new options. I'll try the symbolic link suggestion mentioned.

Thanks,
Kevin

Limneos posted a solution...

1. Create a folder on your hard drive for shares. i.e. c:\share
2. Create another folder in the above share. i.e. c:\share\music
2. Link the Library to this folder.
3. Delete the folder.
4. Use the mklink in an elevated command prompt to make a symbolic link. Name the link the same as the folder you created above.
i.e - mklink /d c:\share\music \\server\music
5. Done. Now you have non-indexed UNC path as a library.

... and it works, but there are problems. Try double clicking on a phto stored in Pictures behind one of these symlinks and it will open in Windows Photo Viewer. Then click the print button. You'll get the message: 'Windows cannot find this picture. Check the location, and then try again.'

Copying the picture to the desktop, and repeating the print works normally.

Edform

Hi and welcome to sevenforums

Limneos post is two away in the same thread. Did you miss that? btw you clipped the color tags as well. If you want you can go and edit the post. Just a heads up

Again welcome to SF

Ken

I'm not sure why you told me these things; I quoted the Limneos post!

I tried to use the quote button but it didn't include the quote that Limneos gave, and that was what I wanted to comment on, so I just used cut and paste and trimmed out the HTML.

I've just realised that my post didn't give the right information, so I'd better explain again.

If you use the method Limneos posted to link a photos folder on a Samba share to a Windows 7 library, in a situation where your photos folder is actually inside an already linked documents folder, the Windows 7 photo viewer software displays photos, but can't print them.

If you move your photos folder so that it is not contained within your documents folder, the Windows 7 photo viewer can print photos perfectly.

So I suppose the rule is, don't use the symlinks process to link a folder within an already linked folder or you will have problems.

limneos,

while the mklink technique does appear to work, the folder contents appears to not be indexed so that it can be found using Windows 7 search.

The library does show the content on the network folder but I can't find any of that content using Windows 7 search.

Has search actually been tried, or did the "we linked a network folder into a library" is all that was tested?

I have terabytes of content on my RAID boxes that I need to search. This was possible using XP and Windows Search 4.0. Heck, I would just like a version of WS4 that would run on my Windows 7-64 box!

Stu

Hi, I could not get the mklink to work. What could I be doing wrong? Does it matter that I put a mapped drive in front of \\ of the second bit? If it's a sub directory must I create and delete folders to the same level?

Thanks