Windows XP search improvement: suggestions for how to use the built-in search more efficiently, or for search programs to replace it

October 18, 2004 10:34 PM

I need a search tool replacement for the built-in windows XP search, or suggestions for it. I have a lot of files on different drives in different directories (C:\AA F:\BB ...) and I when I want to find a specific file that I know is in one of those directories, I have to select and search each directory one at a time. (searching all folders on all drives would take too long.) Anyway to make this quicker?
posted by Iax to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I haven't tried it, but Google just released a beta of their new desktop search app. MetaFilter thread on the subject here.
posted by Danelope at 10:48 PM on October 18, 2004

Eric Lippert is blogging about this. Might be something to keep an eye on.
posted by j.edwards at 12:25 AM on October 19, 2004

One thing I might not have made clear, I dont need to search inside the files, just for files names.
but I have a lot of files.
google desktop search seems pretty fast, but I cant figure out how to get it to index over network shared folders or just limit it to a set of folders that I want to search.
posted by Iax at 1:35 AM on October 19, 2004

If you can handle doing it from the command line, install Cygwin and use GNU locate.
posted by mcguirk at 2:25 AM on October 19, 2004

Ava Find is free and searches the whole hard drive instantly. Filenames only.

The only downside is that you need to pay if you want to index network drives.
posted by smackfu at 6:18 AM on October 19, 2004

I'm quite pleased with Copernic Desktop - it's free and works on network drives. It does index the contents of some files (office, acrobat etc) but also searches based on file name. You may be able to switch off the content searching part, I'm not sure...
posted by chrispy at 2:15 PM on October 19, 2004

Thanks for all your suggestions!, copernic desktop does what I want, and its free.
You can tell it exactly what directories you want it to index and what types of files to index.
posted by Iax at 3:22 PM on October 22, 2004