How to search multiple hard drives?

[Azzain34]

How do you search all hard drives, external hard drives and flash drives in windows 7? In win xp you could do this with a single click (might take some time for results tho), in windows 7 I am contently frustrated. Windows 7 does not search anything unless you index it (or open up a folder for every single little data source you want to search).

Is there a solution to this problem, or is this yet another one of the dozensthings win7 does worse then winxp?

edit: Solution:
1# Open up root of a drive
2# Do your search
3# Click on Customize under 'search again'
4# Expand the 'Computer' tree
5# Select each non-index drive you want to search and hit ok

 

[AddRAM]

What are you searching for ? don`t you keep your hard drives organized ?

Open the drive, start at the top of the list and just use the arrow button, if you know what letter the file or folder starts with, hit that letter again and again to make the search even faster.

 

[Azzain34]

What are you searching for ? don`t you keep your hard drives organized ?

I do keep things organized, but sometimes things slip thru, and when they do its a frustrating experience in windows 7.

Open the drive start at the start at the top of the list and just use the arrow button, if you know what letter the file or folder starts with, hit that letter again and again to make the search even faster.

I am not sure what you are telling me to do here? I cannot even get ANY search going in windows 7 unless I explicitly open up a drive.

 

[AddRAM]

What are you searching for ? don`t you keep your hard drives organized ?

I do keep things organized, but sometimes things slip thru, and when they do its a frustrating experience in windows 7.

Open the drive start at the start at the top of the list and just use the arrow button, if you know what letter the file or folder starts with, hit that letter again and again to make the search even faster.

I am not sure what you are telling me to do here? I cannot even get ANY search going in windows 7 unless I explicitly open up a drive.

Open the drive, and there everything is, just look for what you want, it`s your drive, you should know what`s on it. Go through the drive once a week, clean house. Create folders on your drives to store your data, keep it organized. There should never be any reason ever to use the search bar. The only reason I`ve ever used the search bar is to type dev to bring up the Device Manager, when and if I ever want to look at Device Manager. Any other time I`d just do it the normal way.

Just an example

 

[Azzain34]

What are you searching for ? don`t you keep your hard drives organized ?

I do keep things organized, but sometimes things slip thru, and when they do its a frustrating experience in windows 7.

Open the drive start at the start at the top of the list and just use the arrow button, if you know what letter the file or folder starts with, hit that letter again and again to make the search even faster.

I am not sure what you are telling me to do here? I cannot even get ANY search going in windows 7 unless I explicitly open up a drive.

Open the drive, and there everything is, just look for what you want, it`s your drive, you should know what`s on it. Go through the drive once a week, clean house. Create folders on your drives to store your data, keep it organized. There should never be any reason ever to use the search bar. The only reason I`ve ever used the search bar is to type dev to bring up the Device Manager, when and if I ever want to look at Device Manager.

You are completely missing the point. My entire problem is that my drives ARE clean and well organized, but when I do make a mistake or a file is lost I run into this problem.

Sounds you like are saying windows 7 cannot do a full search on all HDDs...

edit: and to clarify, my problem is not the *speed* of the search, my entire problem is I cannot get windows 7 to do ANY search unless I open the drive. So if I got 10 drives, I need to open up 10 folder and start 10 search.... What a massive pain. I am hoping there is an easier way.

 

[AddRAM]

I just typed the word Avatar in my search bar, it shows the avatar folder I have in My Pictures, it showed the Avatar folder I have on my Software drive and it showed the movie Avatar I have on one of my movie drives, so the problem is not with windows search.

All you have to do is click where I have the arrow to do an additional search on all your other drives.

 

[Azzain34]

I just typed the word Avatar in my search bar, it showes the avatar folder I have in My Pictures, it showed the Avatar folder I have on my Software drive and it showed the movie Avatar I have on one of my movie drives, so the problem is not with windows search.

That only works if you have indexing on for those drives. Clicking on the computer icon has no effect for me.

Edit: but clicking 'custom' does.... wow that is 100% what I was looking for. That allows me to click each HDD.

 

[AddRAM]

And ?

 

[Azzain34]

I edited my post, clicking 'custom' beside computer worked. It allowed me to pick the sources I wanted to search and I was FINALLY able to get correct results. Thanks for directing me towards that feature.

It is still kind of a pain and multiple steps to do this, but MUCH better then nothing.

 

[Layback Bear]

Have you tried just indexing those drives?

 

[AddRAM]

But going back to what I originally said, all your drives should be organized, if you download something or create a file, copy and paste it or place it where you want it and make sure it goes there, and don`t delete it from C til you are quite satisfied and confident you know where you put it.

 

[AddRAM]

I just typed the word Avatar in my search bar, it showes the avatar folder I have in My Pictures, it showed the Avatar folder I have on my Software drive and it showed the movie Avatar I have on one of my movie drives, so the problem is not with windows search.

That only works if you have indexing on for those drives. Clicking on the computer icon has no effect for me.

Edit: but clicking 'custom' does.... wow that is 100% what I was looking for. That allows me to click each HDD.

But you should not have to click on each drive, the new search will search every drive in your system automatically.

 

[Azzain34]

Have you tried just indexing those drives?

Id rather not. I had multiple bad index databases in the past and I keep having to re-index. I also got some drives that are encrypted, some are on the NAS, some are portable HDD not always connected while some are flash drives. I just find it easier not to index.

But going back to what I originally said, all your drives should be organized, if you download something or create a file, copy and paste it or place it where you want it and make sure it goes there, and don`t delete it from C til you are quite satisfied and confident you know where you put it.

Mistakes happen, the way you are talking almost sounds like you want search removed because nobody could ever make a mistake I also have a lot of files, much more than you, so its easier to make a mistake.

I just typed the word Avatar in my search bar, it showes the avatar folder I have in My Pictures, it showed the Avatar folder I have on my Software drive and it showed the movie Avatar I have on one of my movie drives, so the problem is not with windows search.

That only works if you have indexing on for those drives. Clicking on the computer icon has no effect for me.

Edit: but clicking 'custom' does.... wow that is 100% what I was looking for. That allows me to click each HDD.

But you should not have to click on each drive, the new search will search every drive in your system automatically.

That wont work unless its indexed. MS probably designed it this way to give 'quicker' searches thinking that anything not indexed did not 'deserve' to be searched.

 

[AddRAM]

I seriously doubt you have more files, movies, software, documents, pictures, videos, then me, I seriously doubt that.

I never said anything about removing search, I just don`t use it, because I know where and what I keep on my PC.

But you keep your PC how you want and enjoy that search bar