exFAT

[4c5v6b7n]

exFAT not supported?

[void]

Everything supports exFAT volumes.

Everything will automatically add NTFS volumes to your index.

You will need to manually add exFAT volumes to your index.

To add your exFAT volume to your Everything index:

• In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Folders tab.
• Click Add....
• Select your exFAT volume and click OK.
• Click OK.

For Everything 1.5, you can also quickly include your exFAT volume in your Index:

• In Everything 1.5, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the FAT tab.
• Select your exFAT volume.
• Check Include in database.
• Click OK.

[stevenroussos]

I have a couple of discs formatted as exFat volumes (standard USB external physical disk MyBook drives) from before I knew indexing those in real time isn't really supported (I think).

Under Options/Indexes/FAT there is only:
- Attempt to monitor changes (which doesn't seem very reliable)
- Rescan on full buffer
- Scheduled rescans.

I can add them under Folders (making the root directory the added folder) and there is an additional option "Fast Rescan"

QUESTIONS:
1. Is there a reliable way to keep the Everything index for these up to date in real time without total rescan as NTFS is so good at?
2. Would adding them as folders, selecting Fast Rescan, selecting Rescan On Full Buffer and setting the smallest possible buffer size (which is what??) effectively trigger a quick rescan on any changes with minimal performance issues (i.e., Everything being unusable for several minutes while a rescan occurs)?
3. Is adding them as Folders and selecting Fast Rescan actually much faster than rescan as a FAT volume, and is it reliable?

4. I don't have the space right now to back them up. If I wanted to make the issue go away by converting to NTFS, how reliable is the following, and are there any other steps like resizing partition as some places instruct that are necessary before doing this?

(from https://www.voidtools.com/faq/):

To convert a volume to NTFS:

From the Start menu, search for: cmd

Click Command Prompt.

In the command prompt, type in the following and press ENTER:

convert D: /fs:ntfs
where D: is the drive to convert.

5. I discovered another method using a tool "MiniTool Partition Wizard Free" that gives a somewhat more elaborate method using that at: https://www.partitionwizard.com/partiti ... -data.html

Why would one use that instead the simple CMD command method? Is that a reliable tool? Is it safe (without containing viruses, bloatware, extra hidden installations, etc.)?

[void]

1. Is there a reliable way to keep the Everything index for these up to date in real time without total rescan as NTFS is so good at?

Attempt to monitor changes is very reliable.
Everything will detect most changes while running.

Try weekly rescans or just manually update when needed.

Alternatively, use NTFS.

2. Would adding them as folders, selecting Fast Rescan, selecting Rescan On Full Buffer and setting the smallest possible buffer size (which is what??) effectively trigger a quick rescan on any changes with minimal performance issues (i.e., Everything being unusable for several minutes while a rescan occurs)?

There is no performance increase when enabling fast rescan on exFAT volumes.
exFAT volumes do not support fast rescanning.
Fast rescanning is useful for indexing network shares that are remotely stored using NTFS.

Everything uses a buffer to read changes.
This buffer can fill up quickly if there's thousands of changes in a short time.
Everything will have no trouble reading a 64k sized buffer, this is done with high priority so the buffer is usually always empty.
Please leave the buffer size set to 64k.
Setting it to a smaller size may cause Everything to miss changes.

If the buffer fills up and Everything does a rescan, the rescan occurs in the background.

3. Is adding them as Folders and selecting Fast Rescan actually much faster than rescan as a FAT volume, and is it reliable?

Fast Rescan will not work with FAT volumes.
FAT volumes do not update the folder date modified timestamp when a child is changed.
Everything will miss changes when doing a fast rescan on a FAT volume.

4. I don't have the space right now to back them up. If I wanted to make the issue go away by converting to NTFS, how reliable is the following, and are there any other steps like resizing partition as some places instruct that are necessary before doing this?

convert D: /fs:ntfs is very reliable.
However, backup any important files before converting to NTFS.