Whats the difference between indexing and USN Journal?

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pstein
Posts: 59
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2014 6:18 pm

Whats the difference between indexing and USN Journal?

Post by pstein »

In Everything options there are 2 NTFS-Indexing features per partition:

"Include in database"
and
"Enable USN Journal"

Whats the difference?

When do I enable the one but not the other?

Does disabling USN Journal has a disadvantage?

Peter
NotNull
Posts: 5458
Joined: Wed May 24, 2017 9:22 pm

Re: Whats the difference between indexing and USN Journal?

Post by NotNull »

Include in Database means that Everything will do an initial scan and include all found files/folders from this drive it in it's database.

The USN Journal is needed to read file changes of your drive, so the database can be updated to reflect those changes.
The USN Journal is part of Windows; Everything uses it.
If you disable the USN Journal, Windows will re-create it at boot time, so it will be enabled again.


Long story short: don't disable the USN Journal. Everything needs it to get filesystem updates .
pstein
Posts: 59
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2014 6:18 pm

Re: Whats the difference between indexing and USN Journal?

Post by pstein »

Ok.

But when USN Journal is always enabled by default and always (if necessary) automatically re-created at Windows startup
what does it make sense to disable it?
What are the advantages of (temporarily) disabling USN Journal?

Everything is the only search tool I know which offers disabling USN Journal.

In order to tell Everything results from which partition should be shown ONLY the checkbox "Include in database" is decisive.
If this (and only this) checkbox for partition X is unticked then matching results from partition X are NOT shown.
Checkbox for disabling USN Journal has no effect on shown results.

Can someone confirm this?

Thank you
void
Developer
Posts: 16678
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Whats the difference between indexing and USN Journal?

Post by void »

The USN Journal is maintained by the NTFS driver (not Everything)
That is why you see the USN Journal options available in Everything, even when you are not including the volume in your index.
I do not recommend disabling the USN Journal.
What are the advantages of (temporarily) disabling USN Journal?
None.
Windows will recreate the USN Journal on next boot, so there is little reason to disable it.

The option still exists as it can be used to fix some issues by disabling and re-enabling the journal (forcing a fresh journal).
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