old school windows searched top down, like folders > subfolders > files...

windows 7 seems to search through the files in the main directory first, then subfolders, then main directory folders. this takes forever. i hate it. is there a way to fix it? google isn't being very helpful right now, but my brain is scattered in a million different directions right now so i could just be retarded.

6/24/2010 11:32:56 AM

windows 7 search has always been fast as shit for me.

but yea, no idea how to change this

6/24/2010 11:35:10 AM

i don't know if it makes a difference, but i'm searching our work server drive, 247gb. i've used XP & vista in the past and they didn't have this problem, so i don't think it's the network.

6/24/2010 12:10:18 PM

Im not sure on this, so just throwing it out as a suggestion.

Is there any way in Windows 7 to have it index a network location?

6/24/2010 1:03:36 PM

I think the server is supposed to index itself, which probably will only work if it's a windows server.

6/24/2010 1:29:30 PM

there is a long, long discussion about this in the windows home server thread.

the short answer is, yes you can index network servers, but not locally, the networked server has to have its own indexing service (windows or not, windows VSS search is an open format), and the client must subscribe to that index.

6/24/2010 2:35:50 PM

sooooo...i'm just going to have to keep getting the binder with all the projects in alphabetical order out to search through? this has been the quickest way as of late.

6/24/2010 2:49:49 PM

A 10 second bing search yielded this, YMMV:

Add a non-indexed UNC as a library
===========================
1. Create a folder on your hard drive for shares. i.e. c:\share
2. Create another folder in the above share. i.e. c:\share\music
2. Link the Library to this folder.
3. Delete the folder.
4. Use the mklink in an elevated command prompt to make a symbolic link. Name the link the same as the folder you created above.
i.e - mklink /d c:\share\music \\server\music
5. Done. Now you have non-indexed UNC path as a library.

And since ALL libraries are indexed, this will get you a network index to search on. There are three HUGE caveats to this:

1) It's going to take a long time to build the index and is going to eat bandwidth to do it (aka do this on a friday before you head out for the weekend)
2) You will never have any assurance that the index is up to date for the network path. This is why network indexing isn't a real feature today. But for your case, with a fairly static network share, it should be fine.
3) If the UNC path ever changes, you will have to start over and you may get corruption in the indexing service because of zombied indexes. No idea how bad (or if) this problem may be, but be warned.

6/24/2010 9:33:40 PM

um yeah that sounds scary. i don't want to be responsible for fucking up our network

6/25/2010 8:33:57 AM