hddb file search (windows)

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Posted by jimspoon
Sep 10, 2014 at 08:36 PM

I’ve relied on Voidtools Everything for a very long time, but I thought I’d mention “hddb” file search. It is in continuous and rapid development and is now up to version 3.04. It’s come a long way and is very fast.

http://hddb.xp-zed.com/

Posted by MenAgerie
Sep 11, 2014 at 06:42 PM

Impressively fast Jim… blistering even… but forgive me for taking this opportunity to big-up DocFetcher again

(I’m just a fan, not a relative or lobbyist!)… it is not so fast, but it includes a pane with the search text highlighted… Which I find helpful for tracking down half remembered quotes.

Posted by Dr Andus
Sep 11, 2014 at 08:18 PM

MenAgerie wrote:
>DocFetcher
>includes a pane with the
>search text highlighted; Which I find helpful for tracking down
>half remembered quotes.

I think FileSearchy can do that too: http://www.filesearchy.com/

Posted by jimspoon
Sep 13, 2014 at 09:37 AM

thanks for those references. With programs like Everything and hddb, you’re only searching for text in the path and filename. Docfetcher is one of those programs that indexes the content of the files. I’ve downloaded it and will try it out. While looking at Docfetcher on Sourceforge, I also looked at the pages for Puggle and Regain, which do similar things.

In recent years, I’ve mostly shied away from programs that index the content of the files - thinking they’d be too much a drag on system performance. Given how much faster computers are these days, I do need to give them another try. Another thing I want to avoid is multiple programs indexing content at the same time - which would compound the drag on performance. Seems like this thing should be handled by a single indexer at the OS level. Windows Search should be the solution for Windows PCs, but I don’t make much use of it. It’s strange that it doesn’t provide more of an interface for doing advanced searches, at least so far as I can tell.

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 13, 2014 at 02:35 PM

jimspoon wrote:
>Windows Search should be the solution
>for Windows PCs, but I don’t make much use of it. It’s strange that it
>doesn’t provide more of an interface for doing advanced searches, at
>least so far as I can tell.

Apparently you can do some quite advanced things with it, but some typing is needed:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/advanced-tips-for-searching-in-windows

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