Search across the LAN
If you have more than one computer in your
home or office, the problems of finding a file are exacerbated because the file
you want may not be on the PC you're using but on a different one. You may find
that a search for a file turns up nothing, because it's actually on one of your
other computers. You might have to go to each one in turn and search until you
find the file you want. Alternatively, you could use a LAN search utility.
LAN
Search Pro can discover files in the shared resources computers and devices on your
network.
There are some search tools that can find
files not only on the PC they are running on, but also on every other PC In the
home or office. Not only will these utilities tell you if a file exists on
another computer, but they also allow you to access it and to copy it to your
current computer. This can save considerable time and effort when locating a
file.
One example of a search utility that finds
files on networked computers is Everything. It's a simple file search tool, so
It doesn't allow you to find words or phrases, but it does have other
advantages. It scans the disk quickly and creates a database of all the files.
With some search tools you have to schedule scans every minute to keep the
database updated, but Everything monitors file changes automatically and
updates the database as soon as they happen. Searching is near Instantaneous
and results are displayed as you type.
There are two ways to search for files over
the network and Everything must be running on the computer to be searched. It
has its own web server, so typing the computer's IP address Into a web browser
opens a search page. You can then search and a list of results is displayed in
the browser. Files have a download link so you can save them to the current
computer. Usernames and passwords can be set to prevent other people from
searching your computers and accessing files. The only downside is that it does
not search the content of files.
Archivarius
Archivarius offers both file and content
searching and it works over a network too. The network features are more
extensive than Everything, but this utility isn't free. There's a server button
in the toolbar, which enables you to configure it so other computers on the
network can search for files. All that's needed is a web browser to access
Archivarius from another computer and search it. The search results contain
links and Information and files can be downloaded from the computer running
Archivarius.
The software gives you detailed control
over who's allowed to access it and what they can access. User accounts can be
created with passwords, so unauthorised people are kept out. Archivarius scans
the disk and stores the files In a database for fast access. Any number of
databases can be created and you can limit a user to a particular database.
Thus, you could allow one person to access only photos and videos, another to
just documents, while you have access to everything. Security can be ignored if
you're running the software at home; it's more useful in a company where you
want to limit people's access to a PC.
NetworkSearcher
identifies all the resources on your network and searches for files and text
within them.
LAN Search Pro is a free tool that takes a
different approach to searching. What's clever about this is that you don't
even need to tell it what computers, drives or devices are connected to the
network. You simply enter a word or phrase in the search box and click the
search button. It automatically scans the network for IP addresses, logs on to
each computer's shared resources, such as shared folders, and scans them for
files. If you have several computers in the home or office, it can find files
on any PC without any configuration. It just does it, and it's quite fast too.
The only limitation is that it can only access the files in shared folders
whereas Archivarius and Everything can access all files on the computer it is
running on.
If you need more features, then
NetworkSearcher is very similar but has extras like a search area tree panel,
the ability to copy, rename and delete files, search for text within files, and
limit the IP addresses searched. It's not free, but it is better than LAN
Search Pro.
