Is there a way to Index Folders Only

[Dave2416]

Good afternoon

Is there a way for Everything to Index Folders only, as I am not interesting in being able to search for files, I just want to be able to search for folders.

At the moment under Everything Options - Indexes - Exclude - Excluded files: I use *.*

This seems to work quite well, but just wondering if there was a better way of achieving this, because I presume it would speed up the indexing process considerably over a large network, and does not exclude files that do not have an extension.

Many thanks in advance ... Dave

[NotNull]

You can list only folders by using the Folder filter:
Menu:Search > Folder

You can make that your default:
Menu:Tools > Options > Home : Filter = Folder.


If you are absolutely sure you never want to search for a file, you can even remove all files from the database:

Go to Menu:Tools > Options > Indexes > Exclude and define Include only files = folder:

(You can't remove all folders as Everything needs those to for the path of a file)

[Dave2416]

Thanks for the reply.

I was already filtering by Folder as well. You second suggestion is the one I was after, I will give to a go tomorrow.

Thank you very much.

Cheers ... Dave

[NotNull]

BTW:

[...] because I presume it would speed up the indexing process considerably over a large network [...]

I'm not sure, but I guess it does not make (much) difference in speed.
Everything still has to check every file and folder to see if it should be included in the database.

[void]

To index only folders:

• In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Exclude tab on the left.
• Change Exclude files to: *
• Click OK.

It will speed up reading network changes as any files that match this pattern will be ignored.
The * pattern will match ALL files.

Note: *.* will only match files with an extension.

[NotNull]

Out of curiosity, I tested this:
Indexing only 1 network share with 2610 folders and 23248 files.
(Indexing filesize, foldersize, date modified and recent changes enabled)
Each time I deleted Everything.db and started Everything.exe again:

Code: Select all

No exclusions        :  21.8
Include only folder  :  21.6
Exclude * files      :  21.9

(But I still would go with the "Exclude * " solution )

[Dave2416]

Many thanks for all your replies.

Still working my way through your suggestions.

[horst.epp]

Out of curiosity, I tested this:
Indexing only 1 network share with 2610 folders and 23248 files.
(Indexing filesize, foldersize, date modified and recent changes enabled)
Each time I deleted Everything.db and started Everything.exe again:

Code: Select all

No exclusions        :  21.8
Include only folder  :  21.6
Exclude * files      :  21.9

(But I still would go with the "Exclude * " solution )

I find this as I would expect it.
The I/O to get the information from the MFT is the biggest part and has to be done anyway.
The rest are CPU and memory cycles to store info into the index or not.

[NotNull]

In this case it was about a network share:

because I presume it would speed up the indexing process considerably over a large network

That's why I thought it is just as fast (and that is what was tested).

Compare this to a garden center (bear with me ...):
If you want only yellow flowers, you can either go to the garden center to grab all flowers, go home and sort them out. (Luckily in the case of computer data you don't have to bring the othor colours back )
- or -
Call the garden center and ask them to bring you all their yellow flowers.

Over SMB you have to use the first method ("grab all flowers"); for local NTFS volumes their *might* be a "call the garden center" method.

[void]

Excluding all files will make very little difference to indexing performance.

All files and folders are found when indexing.
There is a flags FindExSearchLimitToDirectories which may help, I'll consider adding support for this in a future release.

Excluding files will only improve monitoring performance.
The performance gain should not be measurable.
Everything will still receive notification for all changes. However, if a file is excluded, Everything does not lookup the file size, date modified etc.
This information will be cached by Windows, so very rarely would Everything go to disk for this information.
It would translate to extra network traffic for network shares.