Disk Indexing, Who Needs It? - Turning off Disk Indexing

Windows Xp can be a little too over organized sometimes. It will keep an index for files on your computer. This is supposed to be a quick way for windows to access files. If u dont open and close or search for files very often, or are running low on free space this can have the opposite effect, besides it takes fractons of a second for the computer to locate a file on your hard drive. Follow the next five easy steps to disable disk indexing and free up some space.

1. Open "my computer"
2. Right click on the drive you wish to disable, typically "C"
3. Select "properties"
4. At the bottom of the window un-check the box labeled "Allow Indexing Service
to index this disk for fast file searching"
5. Click "apply"

- note, if you would like some files index follow the next seven steps

1. Right click on desired file
2. Click "Properties"
3. Click the "General" tab
4. Select "Advanced"
5. In the table labeled "Archive and Index attributes" check the box labeled "For
fast searching, allow Indexing Service to index this file"
6. Click "Ok"
7. Repeat for any other file you wish to be indexed


- my 80GB hard drive was full of media, cleared just over 2GB and a noticeable
speed improvement

 

 

 

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Disk indexing is VERY helpfull....

Without indexing parts of my computer would take forever to open through the explorer window.

I have a folder with a little over 1000 files (my music folder ) and it used to take forever to load...But with indexing it takes half the time.

Another good effect of indexing is it allows you to find information abouty our computer a lot faster...Like say you select a certain amount of files n hit properties to see how much space they take up....if you have indexing off it would take a long time to find out the amount of space...But if you have indexing on it will show you the amount of space alot faster.

Indexing will actualy also improve searching speed...Which is very good if you are unorganised like myself

And I'm not exactly sure if it takes space either. It just takes a little while to index it in the begining.

So I really see no good reason why indexing is relevent to turn off...We make improvements to systems to make peoples lives ezer...Why destroy your ezness?

 

 

 

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I was wondering, isn't this a security breach? If someone finds your file-index. Also, total commander doesn't have a problem loading files, because explorer wants to create a preview of every file you encounter. M$ is just too nosy .

About searching, Total Commander searches faster than explorer @ my system, even with indexing on.

Finally I heard that those index files could take up quite some space, up to 300 megs or something...

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If your music file is the only file you browse often just turn it on for that file. It still only takes fractions of a second to locate a non indexed file "typically". If your hard drive is getting full that would slow you down more, should then turn it off completely and free up some room, better solution would be to get more room of course. Also if your index is thousands and thousans of files it would be faster to simply search the file with only a thousand...
Jipman, not sure if it woulb be a security threat, if someone can acess that index, whats stoping then from getting to anything else. And about the space yeah more then i though, 2gb's out of 80
If you turn it off and find you don't get the speed you need simply re-check box
its not critical data.

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Euhm... guess you're right on that point.

I still don't see the use of them, too little performance.

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 Indexing on C drive, allows faster search but it does fail in matching a simple string is available in the file actually. I think it tries to act too smart. Only folder listing and file access might become smarter, the actual text content search on the files in a folder really fetches no result; when the text string is actually present. 

my vote goes to GREP on linux. Windows search with indexing *****. 

-reply by vivek

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