Do I need Windows indexing?
 

At various sites, e.g.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/thing...-state-drives/
I read that you should not use the index feature in Windows for SSDs. In
my case I note that it's enabled.

Q1: Should I disable it?

Q2: What impact will that have (apart from the implied increased
longevity of my SSD.)?

Q3: Given that I have the excellent Everything search program installed,
I'm only now wondering if I need the built in Windows indexing at all,
even on my other large HDs?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ustnl9axxx...ns-1.jpg?raw=1

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

Terry Pinnell wrote:

At various sites, e.g.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/thing...-state-drives/
I read that you should not use the index feature in Windows for SSDs. In
my case I note that it's enabled.

Meant to add a screenshot he
https://www.dropbox.com/s/26pwaqgrhy...ng-2.jpg?raw=1

So:

Q1: Should I disable it?

Q2: What impact will that have (apart from the implied increased
longevity of my SSD.)?

Q3: Given that I have the excellent Everything search program installed,
I'm only now wondering if I need the built in Windows indexing at all,
even on my other large HDs?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ustnl9axxx...ns-1.jpg?raw=1

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

Terry Pinnell wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

At various sites, e.g.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/thing...-state-drives/
I read that you should not use the index feature in Windows for SSDs. In
my case I note that it's enabled.

Meant to add a screenshot he
https://www.dropbox.com/s/26pwaqgrhy...ng-2.jpg?raw=1

So:

Q1: Should I disable it?

Q2: What impact will that have (apart from the implied increased
longevity of my SSD.)?

Q3: Given that I have the excellent Everything search program installed,
I'm only now wondering if I need the built in Windows indexing at all,
even on my other large HDs?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ustnl9axxx...ns-1.jpg?raw=1

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

You have to decide what kind of indexing suits your usage.

The Windows indexing includes content indexing.

Everything.exe is mainly file names (part of which is
done by reading the $MFT directly). Everything index
can tap into the NTFS journal if you have it configured
to do so. Windows Indexing also listens to the journal
so that the index is always up-to-date. If you pour a
million files into C: , it will take three hours for
the Windows Indexer to catch up. So while it knows about
the million files instantly, there can be significant
lag in the indexing it does.

If you used Agent Ransack, and uninstalled Everything.exe
and you disabled Windows Indexing, the result would be
the least possible wear on the SSD drive. Agent Ransack
does all its searches on-demand (including content searches).

On a typical new install here, the Windows Indexer writes
out a 1GB Windows.edb database file. Some users have this
grow to 10GB because they have a significantly full home
folder.

New writes to the file happen, when files are added or
deleted from the partition. The amount of "incremental"
activity on a given day on Windows.edb will be small. So
it's not "writing 10GB per day". It writes 10GB on the
first day, it writes 100MB on the second day, it writes
100MB on the third day. After three months, a regularly
scheduled rebuild happens, so on day 90 it will write
10GB again. So in rough numbers, 19GB of writes
averaged over 90 days, or 211MB/day. The pagefile
probably writes that much (even though the pagefile
is hardly used under normal circumstances).

If you fiddle around with the settings on the
Indexer every day, and force it to write 10GB
per day because you forced a rebuild, then
obviously you consumption goes up.

The above figures all pulled from thin air,
purely for their entertainment value... YMMV.

It would actually be difficult to estimate
write amplification from the indexer usage pattern,
to give a "bottom line estimate of %drivelife
eaten by this activity". I couldn't even guess.
Write amplification is worse, for small writes
(4KB).

*******

You can also move the Windows.edb file to
another disk (a HDD) if you want. I've done
that as part of testing. Make sure to write
down the location of the original file, in
case you ever want to put it back in the
"home" location.

And to answer your question before you ask,
it's not easy searching for Windows.edb :-)
The folder it's in would have the usual
annoying permissions.

Paul

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

In article , Terry Pinnell
wrote:

At various sites, e.g.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/thing...-state-drives/
I read that you should not use the index feature in Windows for SSDs. In
my case I note that it's enabled.

if you read it on the internet, it must be true.

Q1: Should I disable it?

no.

Q2: What impact will that have (apart from the implied increased
longevity of my SSD.)?

negligible difference. something *else* is likely to fail first, or you
will want to replace the computer because you want a newer one.

and if the ssd does fail, for any reason, replace it and then restore
from a backup. no big deal.

Q3: Given that I have the excellent Everything search program installed,
I'm only now wondering if I need the built in Windows indexing at all,
even on my other large HDs?

if you use its functionality, then you do. if not, then you don't.

tl;dr leave it running.

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

"Terry Pinnell" wrote

| At various sites, e.g.
| https://www.maketecheasier.com/thing...-state-drives/
| I read that you should not use the index feature in Windows for SSDs. In
| my case I note that it's enabled.
|
| Q1: Should I disable it?
|
| Q2: What impact will that have (apart from the implied increased
| longevity of my SSD.)?
|

I always disable indexing. It seems very wasteful to
me. But I wonder if it might be more important for
disk drives than SSDs. An SSD has a limit, but it's
claimed to be so large that it's probably not relevant.
It's claimed they can take hundreds of TBs of writes.
My current SSD, in a box I built in 2015, has .84 TB
of writes on it, according to Samsung Magician. So
I worry more about useless seeks in the disk drive I
also have installed.

And as Paul said, it depends a lot on how you use
the computer. I'm very organized and rarely need to
do a search. I use Agent Ransack when I do. Other
people may search constantly, with no idea where
their files are. Those people might benefit from indexing.

| Q3: Given that I have the excellent Everything search program installed,
| I'm only now wondering if I need the built in Windows indexing at all,
| even on my other large HDs?

Isn't that indexing, anyway? I wouldn't even
allow that indexing and I don't see what's so
great about Everything. But that's just me and
my specific needs.

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

But I wonder if it might be more important for
disk drives than SSDs. An SSD has a limit, but it's
claimed to be so large that it's probably not relevant.

everything has limits.

the reality is that an ssd will outlast a mechanical spinning hard
drive.

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Terry Pinnell" wrote

| At various sites, e.g.
| https://www.maketecheasier.com/thing...-state-drives/
| I read that you should not use the index feature in Windows for SSDs. In
| my case I note that it's enabled.
|
| Q1: Should I disable it?
|
| Q2: What impact will that have (apart from the implied increased
| longevity of my SSD.)?
|

I always disable indexing. It seems very wasteful to
me. But I wonder if it might be more important for
disk drives than SSDs. An SSD has a limit, but it's
claimed to be so large that it's probably not relevant.
It's claimed they can take hundreds of TBs of writes.
My current SSD, in a box I built in 2015, has .84 TB
of writes on it, according to Samsung Magician. So
I worry more about useless seeks in the disk drive I
also have installed.

And as Paul said, it depends a lot on how you use
the computer. I'm very organized and rarely need to
do a search. I use Agent Ransack when I do. Other
people may search constantly, with no idea where
their files are. Those people might benefit from indexing.

| Q3: Given that I have the excellent Everything search program installed,
| I'm only now wondering if I need the built in Windows indexing at all,
| even on my other large HDs?

Isn't that indexing, anyway? I wouldn't even
allow that indexing and I don't see what's so
great about Everything. But that's just me and
my specific needs.

Everything.exe stores a list of filenames, dates, sizes.
It is not a content indexer. Reading the $MFT takes
two seconds, while doing a stat() on each item
to get dates and sizes is more expensive.

But comparing that to the preparation of an inverted
index filled with content and filenames, there's no
comparison on the computing (and I/O) effort. It can
take three hours to index content. And maybe 20 seconds
to build a half-ways decent filename-only list
for the competitor Everything.exe .

The Windows Search inverted index does minimal writes
per day, as a few files are added or removed from your
C: drive. In fact, indexing the content of Windows Updates
or Windows Defender files, could be more wasteful
than the user files you add yourself. That's where
using "exclusions" to not index the entire C:
comes in.

However, if you had a usage pattern where you
poured a million image files onto C: and then
deleted them at the end of the day. There will
be a lot of writes in that case. Of course
the file addition to C: would do 100 times
as much writing, as the writing of the index
in response. (For images, only the metadata
is captured, the pixmap is not stored in
the inverted index.)

It's important to keep these things in perspective.

You can probably construct some pathological situation
(such as when the Windows indexer gets into a loop).
In such a case, it would depend on how tight the
loop is, as to the total damage before the issue
is discovered. If a HDD was holding the
Windows.edb file in such a pathological case,
you wouldn't care. There have been cases
in the past, where I observed the file count
going up and down by 1, in a pattern, and
that's an indexing loop by Windows Search
indexer. The loop rate is about one per second
(not going to burn your SSD, but still annoying).

Paul

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

Paul wrote:

Terry Pinnell wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

At various sites, e.g.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/thing...-state-drives/
I read that you should not use the index feature in Windows for SSDs. In
my case I note that it's enabled.

Meant to add a screenshot he
https://www.dropbox.com/s/26pwaqgrhy...ng-2.jpg?raw=1

So:

Q1: Should I disable it?

Q2: What impact will that have (apart from the implied increased
longevity of my SSD.)?

Q3: Given that I have the excellent Everything search program installed,
I'm only now wondering if I need the built in Windows indexing at all,
even on my other large HDs?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ustnl9axxx...ns-1.jpg?raw=1

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

You have to decide what kind of indexing suits your usage.

The Windows indexing includes content indexing.

So that site's instructions seem incorrect:
--------------------
To disable indexing in Windows, right click on your SSD and select
“Properties” from the list of options. Here under the “General” tab,
uncheck the check box for “Allow files on this drive to have contents
indexed in addition to file properties.” Now click on the “Ok” button to
save changes.
--------------------
That would seem only to disable the CONTENTS facility, not the indexing
itself? Presumably the latter is specified exclusively in Indexing
Options?

BTW, do you have the Contents feature checked? For all folders or
customised?

Everything.exe is mainly file names (part of which is
done by reading the $MFT directly). Everything index
can tap into the NTFS journal if you have it configured
to do so. Windows Indexing also listens to the journal
so that the index is always up-to-date. If you pour a
million files into C: , it will take three hours for
the Windows Indexer to catch up. So while it knows about
the million files instantly, there can be significant
lag in the indexing it does.

If you used Agent Ransack, and uninstalled Everything.exe
and you disabled Windows Indexing, the result would be
the least possible wear on the SSD drive. Agent Ransack
does all its searches on-demand (including content searches).

I do already have Agent Ransack. I occasionally revert to it when having
difficulty recalling how to configure a search in Everything. So I'm
tempted to do what you describe. Mind you, Everything is blisteringly
fast.

BTW, Everything immediately found windows.edb but, as you suggested, I
couldn't open its folder. Agent Ransack did not find it until I tried
opening it in Admin mode. And I can now access the folder after asking
Win 10 nicely in FE.

Windows.edb here is about 100 MB.

On a typical new install here, the Windows Indexer writes
out a 1GB Windows.edb database file. Some users have this
grow to 10GB because they have a significantly full home
folder.

New writes to the file happen, when files are added or
deleted from the partition. The amount of "incremental"
activity on a given day on Windows.edb will be small. So
it's not "writing 10GB per day". It writes 10GB on the
first day, it writes 100MB on the second day, it writes
100MB on the third day. After three months, a regularly
scheduled rebuild happens, so on day 90 it will write
10GB again. So in rough numbers, 19GB of writes
averaged over 90 days, or 211MB/day. The pagefile
probably writes that much (even though the pagefile
is hardly used under normal circumstances).

If you fiddle around with the settings on the
Indexer every day, and force it to write 10GB
per day because you forced a rebuild, then
obviously you consumption goes up.

The above figures all pulled from thin air,
purely for their entertainment value... YMMV.

It would actually be difficult to estimate
write amplification from the indexer usage pattern,
to give a "bottom line estimate of %drivelife
eaten by this activity". I couldn't even guess.
Write amplification is worse, for small writes
(4KB).

*******

You can also move the Windows.edb file to
another disk (a HDD) if you want. I've done
that as part of testing. Make sure to write
down the location of the original file, in
case you ever want to put it back in the
"home" location.

And to answer your question before you ask,
it's not easy searching for Windows.edb :-)
The folder it's in would have the usual
annoying permissions.

Paul

As you probably guessed, this line of enquiry was prompted by the
opening instructions in your last post in our discussion about your
novel (albeit horrendously complex!) approach to sorting files on AR.
But, if I do plough ahead with that, presumably I do NOT need to make my
entire D: drive indexable? My source images are within 'Pictures',
specifically at
D:\Pictures\Misc-Graphics\Test - Various AR (100) - Copy

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

On 13/08/2018 17:46, Terry Pinnell wrote:

Q1: Should I disable it?

Only if you know how to spend your free time; Wasting time on creating
indexes helps you stay off our streets causing unnecessary trouble.


Q2: What impact will that have

Boredom;



Q3: Given that I have the excellent Everything search program installed,
I'm only now wondering if I need the built in Windows indexing at all,
even on my other large HDs?

Nobody can have "Everything search program" so you need to double check
your claims. Have you asked Mr Google whether your search engine is
excellent? There is no need to sit and wonder about silly things; Just
go and do whatever turns you on.


Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Good. We can now find you in Grinstead. I assume you are in the
electoral register!!




--
With over 950 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

Terry Pinnell wrote:

As you probably guessed, this line of enquiry was prompted by the
opening instructions in your last post in our discussion about your
novel (albeit horrendously complex!) approach to sorting files on AR.
But, if I do plough ahead with that, presumably I do NOT need to make my
entire D: drive indexable? My source images are within 'Pictures',
specifically at
D:\Pictures\Misc-Graphics\Test - Various AR (100) - Copy

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Well, of course you have control of it.

You can use the Indexing control panel, modify
the areas searched, add D: drive but only
check the D:\Pictures section if you want.
The ability to exclude things works.

I think there is also a global file extension setting,
but removing file types from there isn't really
a good idea. Instead, as you're planning on doing,
just limit the areas of disks that will be indexed,
to reduce the noise level.

I generally index my entire C: on at least one
installation. On VMs (for performance reasons),
I virtually eliminate indexing using all
available settings. VMs have poor I/O characteristics,
and having an indexer running from in there would
be intolerable.

Paul

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

In article , am says...
I'm very organized and rarely need to
do a search. I use Agent Ransack when I do. Other
people may search constantly, with no idea where
their files are. Those people might benefit from indexing.

I have a pretty good idea of where the files are... it's the contents
I'm hunting for when I use Win's indexing feature. I use Everything for
finding files; Win indexing for content.

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

"Jason" wrote

| I'm very organized and rarely need to
| do a search. I use Agent Ransack when I do. Other
| people may search constantly, with no idea where
| their files are. Those people might benefit from indexing.
|
| I have a pretty good idea of where the files are... it's the contents
| I'm hunting for when I use Win's indexing feature. I use Everything for
| finding files; Win indexing for content.

That's what I use Agent Ransack for. Usually
I know what file I'm looking for and where it is.
But sometimes I do something like look for an
article I saved about, say, barley. I'll know
which folder the article is in, but maybe not
which file.

It's rare that I actually need to look for a
file by name, but I can use AR for that, too.

I guess it all depends on how many files you have
and how often you need to look through them.

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

On Mon, 13 Aug 2018 13:56:59 -0400, Mayayana wrote:

And as Paul said, it depends a lot on how you use
the computer. I'm very organized and rarely need to
do a search. I use Agent Ransack when I do. Other
people may search constantly, with no idea where
their files are. Those people might benefit from indexing.

It just took me a while to find the shutup10 executable on here,
mainly because it's not an installed registered program and the
filename doesn't include "shutup" so useless to search on that, in
fact Windows took many minutes to find the settings files for the
application, but not of course the .exe file itself. No easy
solutions and I doubt anyone remembers exactly what they have
installed on their machines, after a few years use.

And whatever happened to Copernic and other such search engines?

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

"mechanic" wrote

| And whatever happened to Copernic and other such search engines?

Copernic? They seem to still be out there, though they
were sold and I can't get their site to load. But I don't
know anything about the software. I'm afraid that was
before my time, Pops. :)

Do I need Windows indexing?
 

mechanic wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2018 13:56:59 -0400, Mayayana wrote:

And as Paul said, it depends a lot on how you use
the computer. I'm very organized and rarely need to
do a search. I use Agent Ransack when I do. Other
people may search constantly, with no idea where
their files are. Those people might benefit from indexing.

It just took me a while to find the shutup10 executable on here,
mainly because it's not an installed registered program and the
filename doesn't include "shutup" so useless to search on that, in
fact Windows took many minutes to find the settings files for the
application, but not of course the .exe file itself. No easy
solutions and I doubt anyone remembers exactly what they have
installed on their machines, after a few years use.

And whatever happened to Copernic and other such search engines?

You need to adjust your Indexing Options to get
the desired indexing coverage.

This is from another post and wasn't intended as a demo
or anything. You have to flip the "" next to C:
and drill down until you find items corresponding
to "Data; Temp; CSC; Temp". Then tick the missing
box so the item gets indexed.

https://s33.postimg.cc/vpyj17idr/che...g_settings.gif

In any case, the tool should not index the folder that
holds Windows.edb, as that would cause the Indexer to loop.

One of the "Data" items might be C:\ProgramData , but unless
you've adjusted your File Explorer view settings to make
system files visible or whatever, it may not show up
in a normal view of C: .

Paul