Search file content without storing it in RAM?

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RastafariSafari
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2023 7:43 pm

Search file content without storing it in RAM?

Post by RastafariSafari »

I love this software and the forum is very helpful too,

I am wondering if I can index the file content but just have it store the index on my SSD like the other indexes. If I limit the maximum size does that affect the whole index or is the surplus stored on the SSD while the limit on RAM?

The size of the file content I want to index totals 17.4 GB, I have plenty of ram on my PC (32 GB) but with file indexing turned on, everything uses 14 GBs of it and nearly throttles my computers RAM (I run a lot of different stuff) . I have found this somewhat noticeably affect performance in some stuff like google sheets, is this reasonable or is that just my perception and it shouldn't actually have an effect?

Then I figure my SSD speed-wise shouldn't be too far off from storing it on RAM, again just my assumption. Let me know if I have misunderstood something as I am not learned in this stuff.
void
Developer
Posts: 16746
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Search file content without storing it in RAM?

Post by void »

Thank you for your feedback RastafariSafari,



Everything stores content in memory.
Everything is designed to index only up to 1GB of text content.
Ideally the text content is stored on an SSD.
Everything is designed to give you instant content searching.

Storing the content index on disk would defeat the purpose of content indexing in Everything.
The content is already stored on disk, this would only improve performance on hard disk drives.

I recommend not using content indexing and storing your text content on a good NVMe SSD drive.
Everything will max out your NVMe SSD read speeds (3000+ MB/s)



Everything will only index the text content, I assume your total file size would also include images, audio, video, etc...
The total text content size should be much smaller.

To view the total Everything content index size:
  • In Everything, from the Tools menu, under the Debug menu, click Statistics.
  • Under Database, the total content size is listed as File data size.


Everything content indexing is really aggressive.
Everything will use all available IO bandwidth.

To make Everything less aggressive with content indexing:
  • Copy and paste the following into your Everything search box:
    /content_max_threads=1
  • Press ENTER in your Everything search box.
  • If successful, content_max_threads=1 is shown in the status bar for a few seconds.
This will make Everything use only one thread when content indexing SSDs.
One thread will not be enough to max out the IO bandwidth for an SSD.
horst.epp
Posts: 1447
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 3:24 pm

Re: Search file content without storing it in RAM?

Post by horst.epp »

Use the Windows indexer and query it by Everything
for larger amount of data.
void
Developer
Posts: 16746
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Search file content without storing it in RAM?

Post by void »

Search your system index with si:
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