Is there a way to Index Folders Only

[Dave2416]

Good afternoon

Is there a way for Everything to Index Folders only, as I am not interesting in being able to search for files, I just want to be able to search for folders.

At the moment under Everything Options - Indexes - Exclude - Excluded files: I use *.*

This seems to work quite well, but just wondering if there was a better way of achieving this, because I presume it would speed up the indexing process considerably over a large network, and does not exclude files that do not have an extension.

Many thanks in advance ... Dave

[NotNull]

You can list only folders by using the Folder filter:
Menu:Search > Folder

You can make that your default:
Menu:Tools > Options > Home : Filter = Folder.


If you are absolutely sure you never want to search for a file, you can even remove all files from the database:

Go to Menu:Tools > Options > Indexes > Exclude and define Include only files = folder:

(You can't remove all folders as Everything needs those to for the path of a file)

[Dave2416]

Thanks for the reply.

I was already filtering by Folder as well. You second suggestion is the one I was after, I will give to a go tomorrow.

Thank you very much.

Cheers ... Dave

[NotNull]

BTW:

[...] because I presume it would speed up the indexing process considerably over a large network [...]

I'm not sure, but I guess it does not make (much) difference in speed.
Everything still has to check every file and folder to see if it should be included in the database.

[void]

To index only folders:

• In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Exclude tab on the left.
• Change Exclude files to: *
• Click OK.

It will speed up reading network changes as any files that match this pattern will be ignored.
The * pattern will match ALL files.

Note: *.* will only match files with an extension.

[NotNull]

Out of curiosity, I tested this:
Indexing only 1 network share with 2610 folders and 23248 files.
(Indexing filesize, foldersize, date modified and recent changes enabled)
Each time I deleted Everything.db and started Everything.exe again:

Code: Select all

No exclusions        :  21.8
Include only folder  :  21.6
Exclude * files      :  21.9

(But I still would go with the "Exclude * " solution )

[Dave2416]

Many thanks for all your replies.

Still working my way through your suggestions.

[horst.epp]

Out of curiosity, I tested this:
Indexing only 1 network share with 2610 folders and 23248 files.
(Indexing filesize, foldersize, date modified and recent changes enabled)
Each time I deleted Everything.db and started Everything.exe again:

Code: Select all

No exclusions        :  21.8
Include only folder  :  21.6
Exclude * files      :  21.9

(But I still would go with the "Exclude * " solution )

I find this as I would expect it.
The I/O to get the information from the MFT is the biggest part and has to be done anyway.
The rest are CPU and memory cycles to store info into the index or not.

[NotNull]

In this case it was about a network share:

because I presume it would speed up the indexing process considerably over a large network

That's why I thought it is just as fast (and that is what was tested).

Compare this to a garden center (bear with me ...):
If you want only yellow flowers, you can either go to the garden center to grab all flowers, go home and sort them out. (Luckily in the case of computer data you don't have to bring the othor colours back )
- or -
Call the garden center and ask them to bring you all their yellow flowers.

Over SMB you have to use the first method ("grab all flowers"); for local NTFS volumes their *might* be a "call the garden center" method.

[void]

Excluding all files will make very little difference to indexing performance.

All files and folders are found when indexing.
There is a flags FindExSearchLimitToDirectories which may help, I'll consider adding support for this in a future release.

Excluding files will only improve monitoring performance.
The performance gain should not be measurable.
Everything will still receive notification for all changes. However, if a file is excluded, Everything does not lookup the file size, date modified etc.
This information will be cached by Windows, so very rarely would Everything go to disk for this information.
It would translate to extra network traffic for network shares.

[Dave2416]

You were quite right, it did not make any difference to the initial indexing time, however the memory resources required to run a 'folders' only database index vs 'folders & files' database index is significant in my instance. Very happy with the 'folders' only indexing, thank you all for your help.

One other thing

Is there a way to search for a folder name, and also a separate second folder name in the path. I can see an option for that in the advanced search, however it appears that it is required to be a child folder from the original folder name, which is not what I am after. I am after being able to also carryout an second AND search for a separate folder name anywhere in the path.

Hope the above makes sense

Kind regards ... Dave

[NotNull]

Search for:

Code: Select all

"x:\folder 1" | "y:\folder 2"

"|" is the symbol Everything uses for OR.
For more details see the Search Help page

[Dave2416]

Hi NotNull

Thanks for your reply, but not sure if that is quite what I am after. Using your previous analogy, and breaking down the search into steps:

If I type: Yellow Flowers into the search box, I will get 50 (for arguments sake) amount of hits, each displaying different paths.

I then want to reduce that amount of hits, by also typing in a second AND 'Path folder name', which can be anywhere within the paths of the 50 initial hits, Parent or Child folders.

Many thanks ... Dave

[therube]

Oh, not quite sure, but...

flowers\

will find the flowers directory

and

flowers\ daffodils

will find

flowers\yellow\daffodils

and

flowers\ daffodils\ freeze

will find

flowers\yellow\daffodils\frost2niteBwareItMight\freeze


(not quite sure if you want \ before or after or if it matters [probably can in some situations]...)

[Dave2416]

Thanks therube

Will let you know.

[Dave2416]

The solution to what I wanted to achieve using the examples:

daffodils path:flowers

or even

daffodils path:flowers path:freeze

I thought I had tried the 'path:' command before without success, obviously my error.

Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions