Explain options on "Volumes" tab in help file/Wiki

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Lunovus
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jan 15, 2010 12:16 pm

Explain options on "Volumes" tab in help file/Wiki

Post by Lunovus »

First I have to say thanks for your good work on a great tool.

My suggestion:
Write some further explanation concerning the options on the "Volumes" tab in the options window.

Currently the explanations just says that one should tick each of the four options "Check media", "Enable USN Logging Journal", "Include in database" and "Monitor changes".

Some of these options are self-explanatory but some are not, and some leave me puzzled as to what will happen if I'll check some option but leave others unchecked.

"Enable USN Logging Journal" sounds really cool but what does it do?
What exactly is the "USN Logging Journal"?

I'm a pretty tech savvy person and know a thing or two about NTFS, but even I had to look up this term, so I'm pretty sure 90% percent of the userbase have no idea what this option does.
And even now that I have looked it up I still don't know why this option has to be enabled for Everything to work.
Should it not work without the USN Logging Journal and just reading the MFT?

And what happens if I uncheck "Include in database" but check "Check media"?

And why is it that if I uncheck "Include in database" on my E: drive and have search results listed and I click "Apply" that Everything is rescanning all drives (but E:) again even if it has already scanned them before?
void
Developer
Posts: 17153
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Explain options on "Volumes" tab in help file/Wiki

Post by void »

Write some further explanation concerning the options on the "Volumes" tab in the options window.
I have updated http://support.voidtools.com/everything/Indexing to include a little more information about each option.
Should it not work without the USN Logging Journal and just reading the MFT?
There is file information in the USN Journal that is required for "Everything" to function.
And what happens if I uncheck "Include in database" but check "Check media"?
The volume is not included in the database, only the status of the USN Change Journal is gathered when you open the options window.
Enabling check media on a floppy drive with no floppy disk inserted could cause the system to hang for a few seconds.

"Everything" does not maintain the USN Change Journal, this is done by the NTFS driver.
And why is it that if I uncheck "Include in database" on my E: drive and have search results listed and I click "Apply" that Everything is rescanning all drives (but E:) again even if it has already scanned them before?
Unfortunately, after any change to the included volumes, "Everything" must rebuild the entire database.
This is to do with how "Everything" sorts and stores the database.
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