Searching for 'matching' files. is there a better way?

[garfin]

Hi, while i do like my jump from XP to Win7 in the most part, i'm just plan confused when it comes to 'searching' for files..

eg XP's search would allow me quite easily to list , and subsequently copy/move/delete all files created before/after a certain date , larger than nnn MB's in size etc regardless if it was a local , or mapped network drive.

Obviously a lot of this is possbile through the use of DOS commands and commandline tools such as robocopy /MAXAGE , i'd just like to be able to do same from GUI, or a good 3rd party GUI based file manager utility that will do such things. UltraFileSearch gives me some of this info, but doesnt seem to allow for the COPY/MOVE/DELETE, of files that it matched on. It also seems to struggle with finding files that are greater than 4gb.

Can someone exlain how i can do thesde sort of tasks, natively, or a good 3rd party app. ?

Regards

 

[Frostmourne]

WIndows 7 should do all that natively. What exactly are you looking for?

 

[kegobeer]

Windows 7 has a much better search function. Open up an explorer window and look at the top right corner - the search box. Start typing in the window and you'll see search filters.

Is that what you are looking for?

 

[zigzag3143]

I understand the OP frustration with win 7 searching. I just tried 4 searches. I index the entire drive.Try doing a search for files > 4 gigs (there are 2 on my HD) no results. Try searching for a file name with a missing character and use a wild card, it misses. (ie rockers***m, or rockers???m)

Could the searches be more specific, sure. It just feels like it could be better

Ken J

 

[kegobeer]

I understand the OP frustration with win 7 searching. I just tried 4 searches. I index the entire drive.Try doing a search for files > 4 gigs (there are 2 on my HD) no results. Try searching for a file name with a missing character and use a wild card, it misses. (ie rockers***m, or rockers???m)

Could the searches be more specific, sure. It just feels like it could be better

Ken J

How did you search with the size filter? Did you use "size: >4000000000"? I tried that on my computer and it found all of the files I had that were greater than 4000000000 bytes.

The * wildcard will search for any number of characters between letters. For instance, if I search for h*me, it will find home, hooooooome, h._folder_me, etc. The ? wildcard will only search for words that have one character missing, ie: h?me will find home.

 

[garfin]

Sorry.. i must have been blind... never noticed those options under that Search box.

 

[logicearth]

size:>4GB is the search you want, computers dont know what "4 gigs" means.
I'm currently downloading a bunch of Ubuntu 9.10 CDs, each over 600 MB.
Start > "size:>600MB" found each on. (even in a non-indexed location!)

Indexing the entire drive or drives is not a good idea.

 

[kegobeer]

Indexing the entire drive or drives is not a good idea.

Why not? I don't index my entire system partition, but I do index my entire data partition.

 

[logicearth]

Indexing the entire drive or drives is not a good idea.

Why not? I don't index my entire system partition, but I do index my entire data partition.

If the data drive only contains documents and other user data like that, then sure. But indexing the whole system drive includes a lot of junk files. And files that change over and over again, adds more work to the indexer.

 

[Codify]

Like many people I keep a system (boot) partition and a separate data partition. I have set the OS to index the whole data partition

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Try:

Everything, a free search tool available at voidtools.com.

It won't search file contents, but is dynamite on file names.