Free File Search Utility is the Best Yet
I've been looking for a program like this for years.
"EVERYTHING" is a free search utility that will locate a file or folder by name located on any of your hard drives in less than a second.
"Ho-hum" you say, "there are several programs that do that."
Quite so, but this one does it without creating massive indexes. That saves your disk space and more importantly, doesn't slow down your PC by needing to maintain such indexes.
"But how can this work?" you ponder, "instant search utilities needs indexes in order to work."
Yes they do and that's the trick. with this product; it uses the indexes that form part of the NTFS file system. It is using something that is already there rather than duplicating it.
It's a clever idea. Now why didn't somebody (including Microsoft) think of this before?
Of course to use EVERYTHING your hard drives need to be NTFS formatted but that includes 99.9% of all XP and Vista users, so it's hardly a limitation.
EVERTHING can scan multiple drives, find search terms embedded within file names and can be accessed from a desktop shortcut, the Start Menu or from the right click context menu. It weighs in at a massive 292KB download. Yes folks, that's kilobytes not megabytes. And its free.
What more can you ask for?
(Windows 2000, XP, Vista)
This item was based on a suggestion by regular contributor Rhiannon Dent.
Update: I need to clarify my comment that that EVERYTHING does not "create massive indexes." This means what it says and should not be read as implying it does not create any indexes. It does, but they are very small and created in seconds not hours. These tiny indexes are possible because EVERYTHING leverages itself off the information contained in the NTFS file system rather than recreating that information afresh.
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Launchy is another useful searcher-
http://www.launchy.net/
SOLVED: I use EVERYTHING, but sometimes I need to search contents of my documents. So after a little googling I have found DocFetcher.
Supported Document Formats:
- HTML and plain text (both customizable)
- Portable Document Format (pdf)
- Microsoft Office Word (doc), Excel (xls) and PowerPoint (ppt)
- OpenOffice.org Writer, Calc, Draw and Impress
- Rich Text Format (rtf)
- AbiWord (abw, abw.gz, zabw)
- Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (chm)
- Microsoft Visio (vsd)
- (In the works: MS Office 2007)
http://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/index.html
I'm so happy! Since Microsoft introduced that new 'Windows Search' facility, (or utility, whatever it is) back mid-2008 in the UK, i've stopped searching for files. I DO NOT understand how the blasted thing works.
What a great idea, d/l a GIZMO recommended search enging for my PC.
Once again, SIMPLY TOPS!!!!!!!
Everything is truly amazing and I have also found DK Finder at http://www.dkellner.hu/freeware/finder/ to be very impressive as well.
Additionally the excellent Locate32 search application and the Locate based Mac Search (for Windows). I modified Mac Search to use the latest Locate32 and updtdb32 executables, as I really like the minimal UI, it's fast and very appealing.
So it's like OSX Spotlight, but for windows?
See...someone did think of it, they just work for Apple is all.
I have used Agent Ransack for years: not as fast as this but you just right click on a folder and it will search for either the file name or text within it, and you can add more folders as well. You then can open or cut/copy the files as well as see the path. Paid version does more, but no nag. I am looking for a Google search that will only search my drives.
Great utility. Thanks!
Downloaded and installed. All seems fine. GUI comes up, I type in a file name, but nothing happens - no results at all. What am I doing wrong?
XP pro SP2, Firefox
Did you read the article:
"Of course to use EVERYTHING your hard drives need to be NTFS formatted"
Nice.....Quick and small....
I like Everything a lot. Google Desktop returns too many irrelevant results for me. Just wish I could search my network drives too.
hi nice site, i use snowbird6.1, but i'll try yours to see if there's a difference, no index, fast
www.indexyourfiles.com is a lot better
This is the greatest search program I have ever used. But does anyone know how to search a network drive?
Downloaded, installed, works just fine for me. Yes, it only searches filenames, and some other tool would be needed to search the contents of a file. But if one is reasonably disciplined in creating filenames, this tool is VERY quick and handy.
They should make a plugin for that.
Like the program. Very fast and yields results quickly. Now, to get a "grep style" searcher. :(
Kent
Amazing... 2.75 TB of data scanned and fully searchable in 30 seconds... Not the greatest set of search options, but for a straight search utility...excellent...Thanks!!
Database can not be created on comp in my company for some reason, so i can not review it yet. i will try it at home.
Awesome! And so quick - I have almost 3.5TB of disk almost filled to capacity and the initial index took about 45 sec.
I have tried (installed/uninstalled) numerous desk stop searches and haven't found one that has low enough overhead to be worth the impact it has on my machine. This suits me to a T.
Thank you Giz and Rhiannon.
AWESOMe !
This is an excellent search program for Windows. It's really the fastest and easiest to use I've yet seen. Look at how fast it indexes files when a new drive (eg USB) is connected. Also try typing some file name that doesn't exist on your computer into the search bar and then create a file of that name with notepad or another program and save it...the result comes up immediately. Now that is efficient. If it would only work with FAT disks it would the perfect search, however, most Windows hard drives are NTFS nowadays so it probably doesn't matter too much. Also it doesn't index Windows shares directly but the web server could be useful for that although perhaps potentially dangerous because you could unintentionally expose all your files for everyone to see if you just index full drives.
Overall a highly useful little utility and one that I'll be installing on all my PCs in the future. Thanks.
I use locate32. Haven't looked at Everything, but locate32 seems to be better. This mature freeware Windows utility indexes also network disk file names compactly and fast and has a lot of options and sophistication. Also, it is trivial to combine full text grepping in locate32, if you can narrow the result list of files to a manageable size, by name based search...
I tried them both and for my needs Everything is perfect.
There is a beta version available on the website that is a portable app; no installation required. This is going on my thumb drive.
It took about 10 seconds on my machine to index 130,000 files, and the index file that it created is about 640KB. It is blazing fast, and you can search for files using regular expressions, which is a huge advantage over Explorer.
And no, you can't search network drives; only local NTFS drives. The beta version now supports removable drives, however.
Thanks for pointing out this utility!
Thanks, I didn't know for the beta. Hope it will stay freeware?
Very cool! And I just had a colleague remove his Copernic and his Google Desktop Search because his PC was running so slow! And he just searches for filenames anyway so woo-hoo!
Thanks Giz! You are the Gizziest!
Anyone know of a fast search(FREE) that will allow me to see graphic files after they find them.
This only shows list, I need to use it for graphic(logos, pictures and mpeg view for selections.
Thanks!!
gaeckard
Started using it about a month ago. Absolutely great program. Can't beleive it's free.
Guys,
download it, install it and you'll understand what Gizmo meant!
I've got this installed for a while now and will not change it for anything - maybe only for Everything....
mario
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