Search facilities are built into Windows,
but alternative tools offer features Microsoft can't. Is it time to switch?
Roland Waddilove explores the alternatives.
Ever since Windows 95 we've had the ability
to use long descriptive filenames Instead of the eight-character ones that were
enforced prior to this, but for various reasons, filenames are often
meaningless. Sometimes it isn't our fault: a digital camera, for example, might
give photographs obscure filenames like P83635.JPG and so on. There is probably
some obscure reason for the numbers, but their meaning is lost on us.
Is
It Time To Ditch Windows Search?
Sometimes filenames are poorly chosen
through laziness and we simply call something Document1, Letter, Backup27, or
give a file the default selected by the application. On other occasions we just
run out of ideas and after writing a dozen letters or reports, it can become
difficult thinking up a unique and descriptive name. We don't get to choose the
names of programs, of course, and some are obvious, such as notepad.exe, but
this isn't always the case.
For various reasons, our disk drives are
full of files, many of which have obscure filenames that mean very little.
Files are scattered across the disk in many folders too. The Documents folder
is meant for documents, and Pictures for photos and Images, but who hasn't
saved the odd file somewhere else? For various reasons we might save an Image
in the Documents folder. One reason might be to keep all related files
together, so a document with related images might have its own folder In
Documents. Now you have images in the Documents folder, but It wouldn't make
sense to split up the files and place them In their own folders.
Windows Vista and 7 have a built-in search
facility that can help you to find files. For example, it can help you to track
down a particular document when you don't know which folder you put it In or
you've forgotten what the filename is. Even if you don't know what the file is
called or where it's saved, if you know what words or phrases a document
contains, you might still be able to discover where it is using Windows search.
If Windows already has a search facility,
why do we need other search programs? Well, that's like saying that Windows
comes with Windows Defender and there's always Microsoft Security Essentials,
so why are there so many anti-virus and security programs? The reason is
because the Microsoft's tools aren't perfect and some alternatives offer either
better features or additional ones that aren't available otherwise. Not every
search tool is better of course, but there are some great ones available that
are well worth considering. You may find one that suits the way you use your
computer better than Windows' built-in search, and if you're using Windows XP,
anything is better than the built- in search.
Simple filename searches
Sometimes you need to search inside files
and look at the contents In order to find whatever you're looking for, such as
a particular document or letter. However, this isn't always the case, because
you may have a lot of files on your computer that don't have any content.
Images like clipart, program files, data files created by software, dlls, and
countless other files on the system don't always have content you can search.
Even if files do contain content that can
be indexed and searched, if you use descriptive filenames when saving files to
disk then a filename search may be all that is required to find a particular
file. Using filenames that describe the content of files is a good habit to get
into, and half a dozen keywords in the name can be as good as a short name but
relying on a search tool that indexes the content.
Locate32
scans the disk for files and stores them in a database to make searching
instantaneous.
There are many search tools that ignore the
contents of files and just search for filenames. One advantage of them is that
they operate extremely quickly. They work by scanning the disk drive starting
with the root (C:\), and drill down through each folder and subfolder. This is
a fairly trivial task for a program and some utilities claim to be able to scan
one million files in around a minute, which is pretty amazing.
Even though scanning large numbers of files
doesn't take long, you don't want to sit and wait for a minute or more,
twiddling your thumbs every time you want to find a file. In order to boost the
speed even more, most simple search utilities scan the disk and then store
their results in a database. It's possible to find an item in a database almost
instantaneously and search results are displayed almost as soon as you press
Enter after typing in the name of a file to find.
This does raise a problem, though, whereby
the contents of the disk drive may change after the database is created, such
as if you add or delete files. This means that the search either won't find the
file, because it was added after the index was created or the item is found but
it no longer exists on the disk drive. Search tools that create databases must
in some way keep them updated or they lose their effectiveness.
Search-GT
is a simple search utility for Windows XP that finds files based on the
filename.
Locate32 is a free file search tool that
runs on versions of Windows as far back as 98, which is useful to know if
you're running an older OS. You can enter a whole or partial filename and use
wildcards like * for any number of characters or ? for a single character. In
order to reduce the number of results, a minimum or maximum file size can be set
and the search limited to files older or newer than a specific date. So you
could search for a file created or updated in the last week that is bigger than
100KB but less than 1 MB. A nice feature Is that if you search for an image,
the File menu is filled with image commands such as rotate
clockwise/anticlockwise, preview, set as desktop background and so on. Search
for an audio file and there's a play command on the menu, as well as options to
open it in Media Player and so on.
The software consists of two components:
the search tool just queries a database of files, while there's a separate
utility to create and update the database. Locate32 can schedule updates for
the database, which can be every minute, hour, day, or when Windows starts. The
updater runs in the background and it's possible to set the priority to low or
idle, which will use the minimum processing power so it doesn't affect the
running of other software. You can carry on using the PC while it indexes the
disk contents in the background. It scans the disk very quickly and updates are
fast too. An Interesting feature is the ability to create multiple databases,
so internal disks and USB drives could have separate databases, or the
Documents, Music and Photos folders could have separate databases.
Search-GT is a simple file search tool that
doesn't create indexes or scan and store results; it searches on demand. It
bypasses the normal Windows file system commands and accesses the disk directly
so that It can search faster, though. The only problem is that it's for Windows
XP only and it doesn't run on Vista or 7. If you are still running XP, it Is
worth a look, but it's not free, which is another downside to this search tool.
