Author Topic: What is the currently best Desktop Search software? (Read 809717 times)

Darwin · « **Reply #500 on:** November 28, 2008, 05:34 PM »

One of the few products Ashampoo have never offerered me (they offer me almost everything regularly including out of date versions and name your price). I finally unsubscribed to the emails having got sick of the constant deluge of offers for versions of software earlier than the ones I actually bought!
-Carol Haynes (November 28, 2008, 12:33 PM)

I didn't bother unsubscribing - I just consigned them to electronic purgatory (spam filter).

Curt · « **Reply #501 on:** November 28, 2008, 07:15 PM »

Have you ever used your discount, though, Curt? It's far cheaper to wait for them to offer you a deal (like the Core Tuner one that I mentioned) as you can't actually use your Yiggles on already discounted applications and the discounts are usually greater than 60% (let alone the 40% to which you and I are entitled)[/off-topic]

- they calculated that just right, as well. No, you made the point, Mike, I have never used a single Yiggle. Maybe we should start speaking about it as it really is: Yiggles are worthless candy for the mind, and their (upgrade) prices are annual fees! But, hey, we hate such politics, so why the heck do we keep on buying this stuff??!! Oh, it really doesn't make any difference, does it, it is only a tenner here and a tenner there. I think I will head over at www2.ashampoo and buy myself this Core Tuner while we are at it.

Darwin · « **Reply #502 on:** November 28, 2008, 07:19 PM »

I think I will head over at www2.ashampoo and buy myself this Core Tuner while we are at it.
-Curt (November 28, 2008, 07:15 PM)

Truly, a man after my own heart!

Armando · « **Reply #503 on:** November 28, 2008, 10:07 PM »

Oh, I'm not disputing your observations (just contradicting 'em ) - I know LOTS of users have reported the same problem. In fact, I left X1 for Archivarius two years ago for that reason. Somehow, when I reinstalled X1 five or so months ago the problem had vanished and I've yet to see it. However, I do rub my rabbit's foot nightly before bed! X1 is set to index automatically on my systems and is set to start automatically as well. TextExtractor is the culprit when there IS CPU activity from X1 on my systems, but it rarely exceeds more than 15%.

FWIW - I have Indexing Priority set to "Delay indexing up to 60 minutes if PC is in use" and indexing updates set to 60 minute intervals. I have the "Index local files in real-time" option enabled as well.

I have about 60GB of data indexed on each machine (they largely mirror each other) of which 10 GB are PDF files and a further 10 GB are powerpoint presentations and word documents.
-Darwin (November 27, 2008, 09:55 PM)

I've set X1 almost like you : Delay indexing up to 60 minutes if PC is in use, etc. But do the indexing part only once a day. I guess I could try to find out what happens when my CPU goes berserk, possessed by TextExtractor and X1.exe.... There might be a few files which makes the indexing process more taxing. Maybe database files ? Will have to check that out when I have more time.

city_zen · « **Reply #504 on:** December 01, 2008, 01:31 AM »

But beside all the auto- features, my interest got caught by these words:

You can set the “priority” in five levels to adjust the amount of processor power each program gets. You can also specify how many processor cores each program gets to use.

If these features can be combined, you would from my imagination be able to tell Windows Update not to use more than a fraction of a core, even if there are four cores. Or maybe I am getting this all wrong?
-Curt (November 28, 2008, 03:54 PM)

Curt, I think they're just using readily available Windows commands. Through Task Manager, "Processes" tab, right click on any process and you get the option of setting its priority (six options, from "real time", to "low") and its affinity with one, some or all cores of your CPU.
Besides, the donation-ware Process Lasso has the same features:

Process Lasso Features:
# ProBalance dynamic priority optimization
# Default process priorities
# Default process CPU affinities
# Foreground boosting
# Limit number of program instances
# Disallow programs from running
# Process logging
# System responsiveness graph
# Stand-alone core engine
# Available in x86-32 and x86-64 builds
# Much more...

or you can simply use the "start" command

f0dder · « **Reply #505 on:** December 01, 2008, 01:35 AM »

Curt: why would you limit windows update, though? It's not one of the heaviest CPU eaters, and it's single-threaded anyway...

xtabber · « **Reply #506 on:** December 02, 2008, 11:22 PM »

askSam is a freeform database, not DTS software (which means that it imports text into a database file rather than indexing it in place) but it provides much more powerful search capabilities than DTS software can. In this respect it is more of a researcher's tool than a file finder, which makes it more suitable for my purposes. It also imports from a wide variety of file formats and is particularly good at creating searchable email archives from email programs, which seems to be the main target promoted by most DTS software.

Unfortunately, it is also quite expensive -- the professional editon, which includes indexing, normally costs $395, but it is now on sale until December 12 for $99.95. I have posted the details and link in the software deals section.

Curt · « **Reply #507 on:** December 18, 2008, 09:15 AM »

The best or not, I don't know, but coming up Tuesday 23 DEC ‘08, Find Desktop Professional is on (a modest) sale at Bits du Jour: Deal Price: $62.50 You Save: 50% List Price: $125.00

http://www.bitsdujou...esktop-professional/

Find Desktop Professional

Create a Searchable Archive of All of Your Documents

(blah blah)... But, with a little help from Find Desktop Professional , you'll be able to distill all of your documents, both electronic and hardcopy, into one easy-to-use, searchable archive.

With Find Desktop Professional, you'll be able to conduct lightning-quick searches (even using Boolean operators) through the text of all of your electronic documents, including Word, Excel, PDF and ZIP archive files. Find Desktop Professional will index all of your email messages and attachments and include them in the query results, highlighting your search terms (and their synonyms) for easy reference. Find Desktop Professional even operates across a network!

If you have a large archive of hardcopy paperwork, Find Desktop Professional will save you from the torture of a thousand papercuts! Find Desktop Professional works with your TWAIN-compatible scanner to scan your hardcopy documents into electronic form, and automatically uses OCR to make every page searchable! You can even add annotations to scanned documents! Plus, everything that comes up in a Find Desktop Professional search result can be copied and pasted into any Windows application.

Find Desktop Professional not only eases your path to a paperless office, it opens the door to a whole new way of performing research in your documents archive!
-Bits du Jour

http://www.finddesktop.com/Features.htm (flash)

Darwin · « **Reply #508 on:** December 18, 2008, 11:27 AM »

Interesting, Curt

It looks similar to dtSearch, which I have installed on my XP machine. I won't be checking this out (have Archivarius, X1, and dtSearch installed along with SearchGT, Search Everything, LineByter, and FileLocator Pro, not to mention a host of GREP tools and File Managers that search as well...) but am interested in any real-life experiences anyone might have to report.

Curt · « **Reply #509 on:** December 18, 2008, 04:14 PM »

The best or not, I don't know, but coming up Tuesday 23 DEC ‘08, Find Desktop Professional is on (a modest) sale at Bits du Jour: Deal Price: $62.50 You Save: 50% List Price: $125.00

http://www.bitsdujou...esktop-professional/

http://www.bitsdujou...professional/notify/
-Curt (December 18, 2008, 09:15 AM)

I was reading about the features, when I saw this:

Indexing speed:
1Gb per Hour (this value can be influenced by Computer performance)

- and my interest disappeared...

Curt · « **Reply #510 on:** December 18, 2008, 04:29 PM »

I was reading about the features, when I saw this:

Indexing speed:
1Gb per Hour (this value can be influenced by Computer performance)

- and my interest disappeared...
-Curt (December 18, 2008, 04:14 PM)

On second thought, I realize that it is the content of documents, it is scanning at 1 GB per hour, so maybe the indexing speed really is okay? What do "you" think?

f0dder · « **Reply #511 on:** December 18, 2008, 05:18 PM »

"Indexing" means "scanning documents to build the index used for fast searches" - so once the indexing is done, the actual searches (or "index table lookup", kinda) should be blazingly fast.

Curt · « **Reply #512 on:** December 18, 2008, 06:30 PM »

Thanks, f0dder, but... Of course I must first pardon me for having used the wrong words, indexing and scanning are not the same. Sorry! And then I ask: How fast is this "indexing speed: 1 GB per hour", compared to other documents'_content indexers (if there are any)?

f0dder · « **Reply #513 on:** December 18, 2008, 06:44 PM »

Don't worry, programmers don't always use the clearest language to express themselves.

1GB/hr sounds pretty slow to me, and like a pretty arbitrary figure. Surely it should depend on harddisk and CPU speed, as well as the content being indexed? Unless they're artificially limiting the indexing speed?

Harddrives are fast today, and even a disk that's some years old should be able to read 50MB/s, and really a lot more. If we reduce that to 40MB/s to factor in disk fragmentation, and generally being pessimistic, that would still be 140GB/hr. RAM speed is measured in several GB/s (even for old DDR-1 RAM), but of course there's some CPU processing done and index file being written, but even if we pessimize by 10x, that would still be 14GB/hr

Of course these are just figures pulled more or less out of the blue air, but 1GB/hr seems weird to me.

Curt · « **Reply #514 on:** December 18, 2008, 07:05 PM »

hmm... are not this two different things - reading the drive, and reading the content of documents? Doesn't the indexer sort of has to open each and every document, before being able to read it? This thought was why I was thinking that it actually COULD be fast, because I have no clue about what it takes to index the content of documents.

f0dder · « **Reply #515 on:** December 18, 2008, 07:15 PM »

True, there's a difference between raw disk reading speed, and scanning documents. Both because locating a file and opening it requires reading filesystem metadata, and because files can be fragmented - reading lots of small files (or very fragmented big ones) is slower than reading one single big unfragmented file. And then there's also the CPU overhead of parsing the file contents.

But still, 1GB/hr sounds ludicrously slow.

Darwin · « **Reply #516 on:** December 18, 2008, 08:40 PM »

Thanks, f0dder, but... Of course I must first pardon me for having used the wrong words, indexing and scanning are not the same. Sorry! And then I ask: How fast is this "indexing speed: 1 GB per hour", compared to other documents'_content indexers (if there are any)?

-Curt (December 18, 2008, 06:30 PM)

Compared to dtSearch, X1, and Archivarius it is very slow, though I can't give you numbers to back this up. Archivarius is (initially) the slowest of the bunch WRT creating a fresh index. I'd say it's doing more like 10-12 GB an hour and it's dog slow compared to X1. dtSearch is in the middle - does about 40GB an hour (based on My Documents, which is about 60GB being scanned in about an hour and a half by dtSearch and in about 5 hours by Archivarius. X1 seems to take about 30 minutes!

Curt · « **Reply #517 on:** December 19, 2008, 02:47 PM »

- I would certainly expect the "1 GB/Hour" to be 1 GB indexed documents, not hard disk space!

Curt · « **Reply #518 on:** December 19, 2008, 04:28 PM »

meanwhile... here is another Searcher I haven't tried, but think I should tell about anyway:
rexCrawler from http://sites.google....site/rexcrawler/news

rexCrawler is a complex file-searching utility built on the Microsoft .NET v3.5 Framework. It is capable of searching both file names and file contents using plain text or regular expression matching. File names can also be filtered using the familiar Wildcard format (*.doc, etc.). The output of a given search can list both filenames and lines that match the contents filter. These results can be sent to both a file (CSV or text) and a DataGridView on-screen. Copying information from the on-screen display to the Windows Clipboard is also possible.

click thumbs:

Basic interface:
What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

Ready to scan:
What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

Scan results:
What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

Scan results w/ line data:
What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

I have programmed rexCrawler in my spare time to suit my own needs. However, I believe that others can benefit from it, and so I have decided to distribute it freely via this webpage. Please visit the Releases section to download a copy of rexCrawler.

--Todd Boyd,
rexCrawler Author

Get rexCrawler v2.4.4.0 (First official release) from http://sites.google..../rexcrawler/releases

Darwin · « **Reply #519 on:** December 19, 2008, 04:32 PM »

- I would certainly expect the "1 GB/Hour" to be 1 GB indexed documents, not hard disk space!
-Curt (December 19, 2008, 02:47 PM)

Indeed - but I meant that the various indexers report, when they are finished, that they have indexced 60GB of documents - this is on a 200 GB partition that contains 93GB of data

Curt · « **Reply #520 on:** December 19, 2008, 05:23 PM »

"60GB documents"

- you do (should) read a lot, Darwin?

J-Mac · « **Reply #521 on:** December 19, 2008, 06:57 PM »

Me? I'm still trying to talk myself into purchasing Archivarius!

Of course "myself" has always been a stubborn b@st@rd....

Mr. Darwin, sir: Are you using the latest version of X1 Professional? I was all set to get that and a long-time user, whom I trust, warned me that it is not quite what it used to be; that it has a lot more problems than previous versions.

Are you seeing this also?

Thanks!

Jim

Darwin · « **Reply #522 on:** December 19, 2008, 11:29 PM »

Hi Jim,

X1 6.5 is "OK" - but admittedly it's not as svelte as 6.23 was on my system

I notice, even on my Dual Core laptop with lots of RAM that it's "heavier" in its latest incarnation. Not enough to make it annoying or even noticeable unless I go looking for it... but "heavier" nonetheless. Functionally, it's the same as always and I haven't seen any problems, yet.

Hope this helps,

Mike

cyberdiva · « **Reply #523 on:** December 21, 2008, 12:25 PM »

I've read through most of this thread with great interest, but I confess that I'm now bleary-eyed and still a bit confused. Currently, my search program of choice is Copernic Desktop Search, version 3.0,0. It finds just about everything I want except my email messages (because I use Mulberry as my email client); for email I happily use Mailbag Assistant. What I'm trying to understand is what programs like Archivarius, Locate32, and others do that I don't already get from Copernic. I feel a little foolish asking this after so much discussion has already taken place, but I honestly haven't been able to figure this out. Copernic finds my files VERY quickly, it does full-text searches, the price is right.... I'd be more than willing to add another program, even one for which I'd have to pay, if it offered me something important that Copernic doesn't already do. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

edbro · « **Reply #524 on:** December 21, 2008, 12:34 PM »

Locate32 is a file indexer. It will keep an index of all the files on your disk and will very quickly locate those files.

Copernic is a file searcher. It will index your files but will also search inside those files. If you want to find a Word document or pdf that has the word "Supercalifragilicious", then Copernic, or any of the other searchers, will find those files for you.

Obviously, a file searcher is more powerful than a simple indexer, but it also taxes a system more. So, it depends on what you need.

Poll

Which Desktop Search Tool(s) do you use? (Choose up to 2)

Author Topic: What is the currently best Desktop Search software? (Read 809717 times)