Win 8.1 Explorer search slow or alternative

thatmanbrian

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I have five hard drives. A total of 7Tb of data! Windows Explorer is often too slow searching for a file name from the search box. I've read that windows indexing isn't very good. Is there a way to improve it or better yet, an alternative please?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8 64bit
    System Manufacturer/Model
    self built
    CPU
    i5-2500K
    Motherboard
    Asus P8Z77
    Memory
    16Gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    AMD HD5700
    Monitor(s) Displays
    HPLP2475w, AOC
    Hard Drives
    SATA 3 SSD, SATA 2 5 drives total 6Tb
For NTFS file systems only, Everything Search is quite good. It takes the info directly from the MFTs. I'm not sure it won't choke on that much data though. Also it does not search text in files: Everything Search Engine

Another freeware is Agent Ransack: Agent Ransack - Free File Searching Utility

Additionally SearchMyFiles is free and does search text in files: Alternative to Windows Search For Files + Duplicates Search
There's a nice trove of small utilities on nirsoft. I've been using many of them for years.

I use Everything Search myself. But I only have one drive with over 90% free space. :)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
Thanks, Everything looks really small and powerful and will give it a try.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8 64bit
    System Manufacturer/Model
    self built
    CPU
    i5-2500K
    Motherboard
    Asus P8Z77
    Memory
    16Gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    AMD HD5700
    Monitor(s) Displays
    HPLP2475w, AOC
    Hard Drives
    SATA 3 SSD, SATA 2 5 drives total 6Tb
Please let me know how it works out for you. I'm just curious because I've been using Everything since XP. :)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
It is working and is indeed fast. You need to remember the old DOS wildcards for best effect. Maybe that's what you should do with windows search, although it gives no indication.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8 64bit
    System Manufacturer/Model
    self built
    CPU
    i5-2500K
    Motherboard
    Asus P8Z77
    Memory
    16Gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    AMD HD5700
    Monitor(s) Displays
    HPLP2475w, AOC
    Hard Drives
    SATA 3 SSD, SATA 2 5 drives total 6Tb
I too had unreasonably slow Windows Search in Windows 8.1. For me the solution was to delete

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\edb.chk

I noticed that this file's description said it contained recovered file fragments so I just nuked it as an experiment. It worked! I guess if the search index gets corrupted then it goes and finds the corruptions and recovers them to this file. And then doesn't use them very intelligently, evidently. Humph. When I deleted mine it was on 8 Kb (yes, Kb, not Mb!) but once it was gone, indexing was free to run at its old accustomed normal speed. Rebuilding the entire index also generally solves the problem, but that can take hours and you lose indexing capacity in the meantime.

Might work for you, give it a try. Moving the file to the Recycle Bin was sufficient, so you can always restore it to its original location if the trick doesn't work.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 x64
Nope. Didn't work for me It still takes a month to search any given folder. I guess there is no solution to this other than to say fk windows8 and Toshiba and buy a Mac next time. I have had about all I'm gonna take outta Microsoft.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 unfortunately
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