Faster searching

[ship691]

Hi

My Windows 7 search is extremely slow. e.g. If I click on the Start button and start typing the name of a spreadsheet file, it takes about 16 seconds before the name of any spreadsheet files to appear.

Worse if you try again a few seconds later, it STILL takes just as long - so presumably nothing is cached.

So:

A) How can I improve my search results speed?

B) Can anyone recommend dirt cheap, light, fast alternative?

I tried "Everything" search from VoitTools.com, which is brilliantly fast has a nasty habit of crashing (particularly on my Win8 laptop). It only indexes file and folder names, but if you name things intelligently for much of the time that will do. And then you have a nice list of stuff that match your search which you can sort in a different order, or right-click

Btw, I do NOT want to search file CONTENT - just filenames and do so super-fast!
For file content I use X1 Search which is fairly expensive but does a pretty good job, once it has opened (another 14 seconds or so) and once it has built its index (may take several hours).

Fwiw, I keep most of my documents in a folder in C:\ and this is about 3GB.
Plus I use DropBox which is about 5GB.

Any thoughts?

J


P.S. Here is a review of Everything search. Unfortunately like is says development does appear to have stalled on Everything.
[Windows] Best free desktop search program | Reviews, news, tips, and tricks | dotTechdotTech

 

[Sir George]

Hi

My Windows 7 search is extremely slow. e.g. If I click on the Start button and start typing the name of a spreadsheet file, it takes about 16 seconds before the name of any spreadsheet files to appear.

Worse if you try again a few seconds later, it STILL takes just as long - so presumably nothing is cached.

So:

A) How can I improve my search results speed?

B) Can anyone recommend dirt cheap, light, fast alternative?

I tried "Everything" search from VoitTools.com, which is brilliantly fast has a nasty habit of crashing (particularly on my Win8 laptop). It only indexes file and folder names, but if you name things intelligently for much of the time that will do. And then you have a nice list of stuff that match your search which you can sort in a different order, or right-click

Btw, I do NOT want to search file CONTENT - just filenames and do so super-fast!
For file content I use X1 Search which is fairly expensive but does a pretty good job, once it has opened (another 14 seconds or so) and once it has built its index (may take several hours).

Fwiw, I keep most of my documents in a folder in C:\ and this is about 3GB.
Plus I use DropBox which is about 5GB.

Any thoughts?

J


P.S. Here is a review of Everything search. Unfortunately like is says development does appear to have stalled on Everything.
[Windows] Best free desktop search program | Reviews, news, tips, and tricks | dotTechdotTech

A really good free replacement is Agent Ransack which can be obtained from the following link;

Agent Ransack - Free File Searching Utility

 

[ignatzatsonic]

P.S. Here is a review of Everything search. Unfortunately like is says development does appear to have stalled on Everything.
[Windows] Best free desktop search program | Reviews, news, tips, and tricks | dotTechdotTech

I have no idea if Everything is still under development, nor would I particularly care.

I'm using a 5 year old version with no problems on Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

It's exceptional.

It will find a file as quickly as you can type its name, or portion of the name.

Works on file names only, not contents.

 

[ship691]

Agent Ransack indexes file contents too though, which is NOT what I want, as I already have that base covered by X1. It will presumably be quite resource heave as a result.

Come to think of it, is there any way to stop Ransack from indexing file content?


The main problem I have with Everything is that the default view is not sorted in date order. And when I try to change the sort order (by clicking on the date column header) it often crashes - particularly in Windows 8. Otherwise yes, I too find it brilliant.

 

[Sir George]

Agent Ransack indexes file contents too though, which is NOT what I want, as I already have that base covered by X1. It will presumably be quite resource heave as a result.

Come to think of it, is there any way to stop Ransack from indexing file content?


The main problem I have with Everything is that the default view is not sorted in date order. And when I try to change the sort order (by clicking on the date column header) it often crashes - particularly in Windows 8. Otherwise yes, I too find it brilliant.

In response to your question regarding "indexing file content" I don't know the answer. I use Mythicsoft's File Locator Pro and don't have much experience with Agent Ransack.

 

[DavidE]

Agent Ransack indexes file contents too though, which is NOT what I want, as I already have that base covered by X1. It will presumably be quite resource heave as a result.

Come to think of it, is there any way to stop Ransack from indexing file content?

Where or how do you see Agent Ransack creating indexes ?
My understanding it does not use indexes.
I found this on the Mythicsoft Q&A site:

Neither product uses indexes but FileLocator Pro does have a caching feature where the text extracted from documents (e.g. PDF, Word, Excel) can be cached for very fast searching.

Source: Indexes for content searches - Mythicsoft Q&A

 

[ship691]

OK... so how does Mythicsoft's File Locator Pro compare with Everything search?

 

[Sir George]

OK... so how does Mythicsoft's File Locator Pro compare with Everything search?

As for myself, I don't know. I use "File Locator Pro" as a personal choice and have never compared it to "Everything". I would venture to guess there is a comparison on the web and you may want to take a shot at researching it, if it's important enough to you.

 

[DavidE]

OK... so how does Mythicsoft's File Locator Pro compare with Everything search?

You could also install Agent Ransack or FileLocator Lite, these are free.
Then you could use it to see if it meets your needs and how it compares to Everything.

If you want to test the additional features of FileLocator Pro (paid) they have a free 30 day trial available.

 

[ship691]

Sorry I may not have been clear. What I am asking how well both of those things work as searching tools across filenames NOT file contents.

I am exceedingly loath to install a damned thing these days because System Restore no longer works on my Windows 7 (no, not even when I have AVG deactivated fro 15 mins). And any manual uninstall always leave crud behind.

 

[DavidE]

FileLocator Lite (aka Agent Ransack) works well for me.

I create a System Backup Image before installing new programs, patch Tuesday updates, major configuration changes, etc.
That way if something goes wrong I can easily restore the Backup Image.

Here is a good tutorial by whs for Imaging with Macrium:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html