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