Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

I spy...with my little eye...on my hard drive...

(1/4) > >>

Innuendo:
I see the last time we had a meaningful discussion about desktop search programs was, well...a billion years ago.

I'm looking for one because I'm tired of doing long non-indexed searches all the time when I'm looking for something. Unfortunately, I'm one of those who Windows Search and Everything isn't going to work for because I've got the majority of my files on a NAS. Everything doesn't work with NASes and Windows Search....Microsoft says if you want to index networked content to use the Work Offline feature. Only problem with that is "Work Offline" is synonymous with "copy those files to my hard drive". Ummm....I don't want to copy 3 TB of data to my PC. That's why they are sitting in a NAS. Thank you very much, Microsoft.

I'm trialing Copernic right now...it seems to do the job, but there are the signs of a memory leak afoot. I was going to growl about the pricing...$50 seems like a lot of money...till I saw X1 Desktop Search. It's $50 & if you want upgrades there's a $20 charge on top of that.

So does anyone know of any other desktop search programs than can index network shares that won't cost an arm and a leg? A modern interface that shows file previews & doesn't look like it was programmed for Windows For Workgroups would be a major plus.

Maybe I should just rip the drives out of the NAS and put them in my PC? I'd be giving up a lot of functionality, though....and then there are all the reports that people say Everything and Windows Desktop Search don't show them all their files.

tranglos:
Locate32 (free) works fine for indexing my NAS drive, and another one on Firewire. Like Everything, it indexes filenames only, not the content of files.

For contents, Archivarius (€ 29 for a personal license) works very well with NAS, too. It has a somewhat quirky, old-school interface, but is very fast and relatively easy on resources. Does show a (text-only) file preview.

Darwin:
I use a combo of Windows Desktop Search, Archivarius and dtSearch. dtSearch is amazing, but four times as expensive as X1 (though I haven't paid an upgrade fee in four years). I got an academic discount on it which resulted in it being as cheap as Windows Desktop Search... Archivarius is very good and probably what I'd recommend in your situation.

kunkel321:
I use a combo of Windows Desktop Search, Archivarius and dtSearch. dtSearch is amazing, but four times as expensive as X1 (though I haven't paid an upgrade fee in four years). I got an academic discount on it which resulted in it being as cheap as Windows Desktop Search... Archivarius is very good and probably what I'd recommend in your situation.
-Darwin (February 18, 2012, 09:07 AM)
--- End quote ---
  Are you saying that dtSearch offers academic pricing?  I don't see it on their site.

And yes, I too, have been searching for a good option here.  Was heart-broken when Google Desktop died.   

IainB:
I'm very interested in this discussion.
Desktop or NAS/Network, index/search seems to be a perennial problem.

I too was desolé when Google Desktop Search (GDS) was killed off by Google.
I have found nothing to replace it. It's departure has left a vacuum.
At one time GDS could find pretty much everything,. including inside archived files, Gmail, Outlook, and your other PCs.
Mind-blowingly powerful search of the virtual unified desktop - cloud and client-based. But then, because cosporate users raised objections, Google started to lop off its limbs.
It was always in ß, sometimes locked up the CPU or needed to have its indexing restarted from scratch to work around some internal bug.
But nothing else quite like it.

On the other hand, where search should arguably been one of its strongest features, Microsoft Windows indexing/search was a singular weakness. Whether it even did what it was designed to do was not the issue - it never worked effectively/efficiently in XP - it was simply infeasible. It was such a resource hog that it was the first thing you had to turn off to restore your computer's performance potential.
Then, in Win7 it began to look as though Microsoft Windows indexing/search had finally been rebuilt using modern technology. Oops, wrong. It starts off really well, but then, after a while, you can't find those files that you know you have and which were originally showing up in searches. What gives?
Microsoft seems to be silent other than offering the useless suggestion that you reset your settings or rebuild the probably corrupted index. The thing is, it shouldn't be failing so easily in the first place. Not fit for purpose.

What are/were the options for search?
Just to kick things off, I put up this list here at EditPad: Summary of Search Tools

It's open to public use (read/write access).

Might this be of use as a running tally of what we know about the various search software for this discussion? Update it as you see fit.
I am also looking elsewhere (e.g., incl. Wikipedia) for a summary of search tools that we might be able to add to the discussion.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page