Search File Name

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Martin
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Bill Martin

Does someone have a faster program to recommend than XP-Home to search for
simple file names on my disk? Using the normal IE directory search tool, to
search through my whole 30GB disk for a simple known file name takes many
minutes -- despite the fact that I let XP index all my files in the background
in advance. It would seem that if XP had collected a list of file names in
advance it would be the work of a few seconds to look up the name, but
apparently not.

I've used the Google search tool on my disk, but that only seems to search for
content within files rather than for the file names themselves.

What do you folks use?

Thanks.

Bill
 
I use XP's Search. Some people like Agent Ransack.

[[Agent Ransack is a free tool for finding files and information on your
hard drive fast and efficiently. When searching the contents of files Agent
Ransack displays the text found so you can quickly browse the results
without having to separately open each file!]]
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/download.aspx

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
Sun, 08 Jan 2006 15:10:14 -0500 from Bill Martin
Does someone have a faster program to recommend than XP-Home to search for
simple file names on my disk? Using the normal IE directory search tool, to
search through my whole 30GB disk for a simple known file name takes many
minutes -- despite the fact that I let XP index all my files in the background
in advance.

You probably want to turn off the indexing service. I don't use it
myself, but reports I've seen make it out to be a drag on performance
and not that great an improvement in searches.
I've used the Google search tool on my disk, but that only seems to search for
content within files rather than for the file names themselves.

What do you folks use?

What about the good old command prompt?

dir c:\*zonk* /s /a /p

finds any file on the c drive with "zonk" anywhere in its name.

If you don't have a command prompt open, do Start >> Run (or Windows
key + R) and then type

cmd /k dir c:\*zonk* /s /a /p

If you're going to do this frequently, set up a batch file or an
alias; see Help and Support for instructions.
 
For what it's worth, here's the result of a search for all files named *150dpi*
on my small 30GB hard drive.


Explorer 3.2 minutes 15 files found (indexing used)
Dir c:\ 1.2 min 9 files found
Ransack 0.1 min 9 files found

Google Instantaneous 3 files found
Yahoo Instantaneous 5 files found

The trouble with the Google and Yahoo search tools of course is that they only
examine certain file types and consequently don't find all files on the disk.

Explorer found more files than the others because it found several files created
by the Google search program that are perhaps living in the browser cache or
something -- it gives the local IP address of my computer for those extra 6
files rather than a disk subdirectory which I find curious. And it found those
in the middle of the search -- i.e. some disk files found before the IP files
and some after them.

I didn't try the TotalCommander recommended by Martin Foster because it seemed
like it does a whole lot more than I was looking for.

Thanks all...

Bill
 
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