find anything with [search] everything

searching for files can be a hassle. windows search is better than it used to be but can still take a while to leave you no better off than you were before. enter [search] everything. this little program uses magic and pixie dust to index every file on your drives (ntfs only) in seconds. you read that right. seconds after installing the program, you can use it to find a file.

sure, google desktop search can do it. but do you really want to give google more of your information? and besides, gds chews more processing power than nicolas cage does scenery. everything, on the other hand, is lean and mean.

okay, caveats – you knew there had to be some. you have to know the name of the file. or part of it. the program doesn’t index the content like evernote, but it will take wild cards and other boolean operators. search is nominally restricted to local drives (internal and external), but you can go here for how to set it up with a network drive as well.

it is so, so fast. this is what you’ll see when you open it.

enter a search, like the one shown here:

I started with ogg audio files, then narrowed it down to ryan adams. I wasn’t sure how it would appear in the file name, so I prefaced and ended with a wild card (the asterisk). literally as soon as I entered the second star, I had my results.

if you ever experience the need to find files on your computer, try search everything

another example – sometimes programs want to store their output where they want, which is sometimes not where you or logic for that matter would have them go. I refer here to the software for my brother scanner. lovely machine, really. but it wants to put my scans someplace I can never recall, and I have been too lazy to adjust the settings. so, tonight I scan in the latest evidence of junior miss’s fabulousness, a story she has been writing in the back seat while we commute. I want to send it on to various unsuspecting family and friends who may or may not share my fascination with my progeny. no matter, I don’t do it that often.

but then I can’t find the pdf file! argh!

everything to the rescue. I type in the name of the file, and voila!

if you install it and find it is not indexing or even “seeing” one of your drives, odds are it is formatted as fat or fat32 rather than ntfs. fortunately, on an xp box or later, converting the drive to ntfs is ridiculously simple. although as always, you really should back up your data first. I didn’t and lived to tell the tale, but you have been warned.

using everything with vista

finally, search everything defaults to run on start up, but if you are one of us lucky enough to be running vista, it will get blocked. vista doesn’t like random programs rooting around in the subbasement. here’s a way to end run dear leader – er, I mean the user account control (uac).

what local search tricks do you use?

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