Indexing Mapped Drives

[js0873]

What's the best way of getting Everything to allow index and search mapped drives? In our domain, for example, we always map an F drive. It's across our network and used for shared drive, a common practice. It doesn't show in Everything by default, even though it's mapped. Right now I'm pointing to it as a folder and it's scanning it, but it's been scanning for quite a while. It did finish, but it took as much as 5 minutes. And I'm not confident it'll track changes since a folder additions says "Attempt to monitor changes" and by default to update every day at 3 AM. The C drive, I thought, was constantly modified and indexed. Isn't that right? Bottom line, what's the proper way of always searching against a networked drive efficiently?

[void]

The best/most efficient way to index mapped network drives with Everything at the moment is folder indexing as you have already done.

[js0873]

The best/most efficient way to index mapped network drives with Everything at the moment is folder indexing as you have already done.

Thanks. It appears to be working fine, but I'm unclear on what the update at 3 AM does. Since it monitors changes effectively on an ongoing basis (it picks up new files and changes as best I can tell), what does the nightly update do?

[void]

what does the nightly update do?

Rescans the entire folder. This will pickup on any missed changes.

[js0873]

I’m finding that it generally pick up folder changes on the fly, but not always, before the nightly update. If I do “Update Now” that picks things up, but I’m unclear on why it sometimes picks up changes to the folder without an update and at other times it misses them. We have this tool on a lot of user’s desktops and I’d hate to change them to updating every few hours unless it’s necessary, but maybe you can help me out by understanding why some changes are missed. Thanks - Joel

[void]

Windows likes to batch changes up in to one big change notification.

Batching changes usually takes place when there has been many changes in a very short time, usually more than 10 changes in 1 second.

There's an option in Everything 1.4 beta to process these big changes (Tools -> Options -> Folders -> Process update direction notifications).
However, it is not very efficient, it is essentially a full rescan of the folder.

[js0873]

OK, thanks. On a local drive I've never seen this happen, not noticing it detect a new file or folder. On a network drive I guess it happens because it's not local, correct? Basically, what would be your recommendation be for processing a network drive efficiently and as accurately as possible? Thanks - Joel

[void]

Batching of change notifications can happen from local or remote changes.

Monitoring network drives with folder indexing is a hit or miss with Windows.
It will usually behave the same as a local folder, or it will never receive any change notifications.

I recommend using the defaults in Everything to update the folder indexes daily.