Is there a search index-like feature for Windows?
Something that indexes your files so that you can search though them quickly later.
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Sign up to join this communityIs there a search index-like feature for Windows?
Something that indexes your files so that you can search though them quickly later.
You're referring to Windows Desktop Search. This is for XP and it's built into Windows Vista and 7
Another alternative is Google Desktop Search.
If you want something that is a lot faster and less resource heavy (though can't index file content[1]), then Locate32 is a great alternative, it is a GUI pseudo-port of the unix locate command (comes in 32 and 64bit versions, is actively developed and is very small and portable):
http://locate32.net/content/view/14/26/
Windows Desktop Search, at least before version 4 in my testing was very poor performance-wise compared to Google Desktop Search. As I understand it, Microsoft have improved performance in the latest version.
[1] You can however in the advanced search options, find text within a set of files, but this doesn't use a pre-indexed database...
I really like regain for Windows. It's German, but it is really good. I like it, because it indices all files you want and you can develop own filters, etc.
One problem exist: The priority of the indexing process is setup to Normal
so it disturbs you. I contacted the developer, but there's no reaction yet.
Cathy search utility.
Searching cataloged local hard drive and/or offline filesystems (network shares, CD/DVDs) is almost instant. The memory footprint tiny and the exe itself is under 48K.
Main download: http://www.mtg.sk/rva/Cathy.zip . Because updating the indexes or "catalogs" is manual (which turns out to be a nice feature performance-/portability-/versioning-wise), there's a companion command-line version to script/schedule updating the index http://www.mtg.sk/rva/CathyCmd.zip
neoSearch is a desktop search program that can index your entire system in less than a minute.
Features: