Windows Search Alternative?

[TommyTwommy]

Is there a free piece of software that I can use as an alternative to Windows Search.. I have a folder that has thousands of small files that have many words in their names.. and when I search for something Windows always comes up with nothing even after waiting for a minute or two it just says "No items match your search." I just need to be able to copy and multiselect the files that match my search in the software, nothing else..

[owluitar]

You could add that folder to Windows' indexing options and it would be indexed for you to search quickly...

[TommyTwommy]

3 minutes ago, owluitar said:

You could add that folder to Windows' indexing options and it would be indexed for you to search quickly...

I should've noted that I've done everything to make Windows Search work... including indexing (multiple times) but it didn't help at all..

[Sauron]

You should use a database for this sort of thing, searching an ntfs file system probably isn't going to get any faster regardless of what you use.

[TommyTwommy]

Just now, Sauron said:

You should use a database for this sort of thing, searching an ntfs file system probably isn't going to get any faster regardless of what you use.

Why is that? Can you go to more details?

[TommyTwommy]

3 minutes ago, berny22 said:

Why is that? Can you go to more details?

 

how does one index this? most of these files are between 1 and 10 MBs

[Sauron]

8 minutes ago, berny22 said:

Why is that? Can you go to more details?

Databases, being designed for this sort of thing specifically, take a lot of measures to ensure the search is as fast as possible even on very large tables. File systems also take some measures to this end but they are not the main focus. NTFS in particular isn't very fast and gets worse for many small files.

6 minutes ago, berny22 said:

 

how does one index this? most of these files are between 1 and 10 MBs

It depends on how those files were generated, ideally you'd have to insert their name and path into the database every time they are created but if they are generated by a program that can be a problem - and obviously inserting 50 thousand file names by hand is impractical. You could use a script that inserts all file names from that folder into a database together with their path; this will take a while but only needs to be done once. If you use something like microsoft access, once the files are into the database it shouldn't be too hard to configure it to automatically copy all files matching your search parameters to a folder of your choosing.

[TommyTwommy]

19 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Databases, being designed for this sort of thing specifically, take a lot of measures to ensure the search is as fast as possible even on very large tables. File systems also take some measures to this end but they are not the main focus. NTFS in particular isn't very fast and gets worse for many small files.

It depends on how those files were generated, ideally you'd have to insert their name and path into the database every time they are created but if they are generated by a program that can be a problem - and obviously inserting 50 thousand file names by hand is impractical. You could use a script that inserts all file names from that folder into a database together with their path; this will take a while but only needs to be done once. If you use something like microsoft access, once the files are into the database it shouldn't be too hard to configure it to automatically copy all files matching your search parameters to a folder of your choosing.

Well I've been using a handmade python script to write down file paths of files that contain a term from my input and move them to a separate folder so far, but I thought there is a better solution out there..

[Sauron]

Just now, berny22 said:

Well I've been using a handmade python script to write down file paths of files that contain a term from my input and move them to a separate folder so far, but I thought there is a better solution out there..

Indexing them in a database would mean not needing the script after the first time. Unfortunately I don't know of a program that does this sort of thing in a more intuitive way. The only other thing I can suggest to make the native windows search faster, if you aren't willing to set up a database, is to make sure the last box in explorer's search options menu is unchecked:

if you haven't already. This will ensure windows is only sorting through the filenames and not through the contents of every file.

[TommyTwommy]

I've ended up using a program called "Everything." It works amazing! Instant search results with no need for indexing.. I don't know how they've done it, but I love it!

It also includes regex and boolean as well as windows file attributes search..

 

https://www.voidtools.com/

[Sauron]

5 minutes ago, berny22 said:

I've ended up using a program called "Everything." It works amazing! Instant search results with no need for indexing.. I don't know how they've done it, but I love it!

It also includes regex and boolean as well as windows file attributes search..

 

https://www.voidtools.com/

Good to know that exists, it seems it does exactly what I was suggesting but automatically.