Everything and Windows indexing

General discussion related to "Everything".
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TOVOT
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:36 pm

Everything and Windows indexing

Post by TOVOT »

since i am using Everything, i have disabled Windows indexing, and i am wondering:
  • does disabling Windows indexing compromise Everything functionality?
  • is Windows indexing related to Prefetch and SuperPrefetch in any way?
  • is it safe to disable Windows indexing?
I take the opportunity of this post, to describe this program as a real improvement to Windows, it is much more efficient and faster than Windows search, in a surprising way 8-)
NotNull
Posts: 5461
Joined: Wed May 24, 2017 9:22 pm

Re: Everything and Windows indexing

Post by NotNull »

TOVOT wrote: Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:50 pm does disabling Windows indexing compromise Everything functionality?
No. Everything uses it's own method to get file information.
However ..
Everything 1.5 has an option to query the Windows index using the si: function.
This can be useful when you want to index the contents of files too. Everything 1.5 can do that already, but loads said content into RAM. Windows indexing doesn't.

TOVOT wrote: Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:50 pm is Windows indexing related to Prefetch and SuperPrefetch in any way?
No. Those are Windows mechanisms to load programs faster into RAM after the first start. When you start a program from Everything, these caches will get filled too (by Windows).

TOVOT wrote: Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:50 pm is it safe to disable Windows indexing?
Windows indexing not only indexes the files on your disks, but is also responsible for searching in Windows Settings and installed programs (startmenu). Most people do use that.
You can configure Windows indexing to skip indexing files/folders on disk.
horst.epp
Posts: 1448
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 3:24 pm

Re: Everything and Windows indexing

Post by horst.epp »

For finding dirs and file names no one needs Windows indexing if Everything is running
but Everything can query the Windows index.
The other importand search function of Everything and Windows indexing is content search.
I use Everythings content indexing for a small amount of importand files.
As Everything holds its index in memory I let Windows indexing make the rest as this is stored on disk.
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