what does index service do for hard drives?

[Onceler]

is it supposed to make file searches faster(because I cannot tell that it does anything in that regard),I do notice that it makes the drive more sluggish

 

[heymrdj]

Unless you have an old IDE single core POS computer, file indexing literally take seconds per thousands of files. Indexing however does make file searching faster on the order of multitudes. This is a core feature of Vista.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

Indexing generally makes search results appear significantly faster than unindexed searches. Usually I get relevant results as I type.

Are you searching in unindexed directories when you search? For best results (for the indexer have any impact) you want to search against the index, which will happen by default if you have indexed files. To see what directories are indexed go to Control Panel\Indexing Options.

If you're on XP, indexing is worthless on the built in search engine and if you're on Vista you might want to check the indexing options. Either way, updating to WDS4.0 would help.

Edit: If you just installed Windows Vista or 7 give it an hour or two while it builds the index up, you can check it's progress in the Indexing Options control applet.

 

[tcsenter]

I prefer Windows XP search feature vastly more, though it is much slower, I have more control over the search options. It doesn't start searching away until I press "Search". I hate when I'm not even done typing the search keyword or filename and Vista has already returned 500 partial matches.

By default, Vista indexes locations that would rarely contain files the user would be interested in searching for (e.g. %Windir% or program data). You might try limiting the indexed locations to just those that are likely to have files you are likely to search for (e.g. user profile directory).

 

[corkyg]

I turn indexing OFF on both my XP and Vista systems. I rarely use the Search function, and it cuts out a lot of disk thrashing. It also does away with a lot of metadata/metafile fragmentation in files such as:

d:\$EXTEND\$OBJID:$INDEX_ALLOCATION

 

[lxskllr]

I keep indexing on, but I have have a selective subset in the indexing options. That way I get the benefit, without many of the drawbacks.

 

[degibson]

Think of your hard drive like a dictionary. Without an 'index', your computer is just going to look for your file 'alphabetically' (not really, of course, its just a metaphor). In particular, it doesn't know right away where, say, files starting with 'D' are stored. So, without an index, the hard drive has to be searched a bit.

Now, think of an index as little tabs on the pages for each letter -- so a search can skip straight to D, or E, or whatever letter you like. Now a real index is quite a bit more complicated than that (i.e. there have been hundreds or maybe thousands of PhDs in database systems studying indexing), but you should get the picture.

The only trick is: Unlike a dictionary, sometimes the contents of your drive change. That makes the index stale, and it occasionally has to be re-built, which can take awhile.

Edit: Typo

 

[nordloewelabs]

Originally posted by: corkyg
I turn indexing OFF on both my XP and Vista systems. I rarely use the Search function, and it cuts out a lot of disk thrashing. It also does away with a lot of metadata/metafile fragmentation in files such as:

d:\$EXTEND\$OBJID:$INDEX_ALLOCATION

exactly my situation and thoughts.