WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.540 You know what really ruptures my hot pocket? When even though you have a fast PC, you type in a search string in the file explorer, 00:00:07.540 --> 00:00:12.300 that progress bar inches toward the end, and then it just stops for enough time for you 00:00:12.300 --> 00:00:15.580 to just go and find the thing the old fashioned way. 00:00:15.580 --> 00:00:20.700 So what gives? Oh, and we're aware there's another Windows search that also sucks, but that'll be a 00:00:20.700 --> 00:00:25.980 topic for another video. It turns out that although the Windows file search can be immensely frustrating, it's 00:00:25.980 --> 00:00:33.980 actually just trying to be thorough. You see by default, Windows searches not only the file names, but also the file contents. 00:00:33.980 --> 00:00:38.860 And even if you have a really fast NVMe SSD, you're essentially asking the operating system 00:00:38.860 --> 00:00:43.300 to go through and examine nearly every byte on the drive. 00:00:43.300 --> 00:00:47.740 And with an individual drive potentially holding trillions of bytes, this can take a 00:00:47.740 --> 00:00:54.420 really long time. Of course, as frustrated as we get at Microsoft sometimes, they aren't stupid, and so they've 00:00:54.420 --> 00:00:58.100 tried to mitigate the problem with a feature called indexing. 00:00:58.100 --> 00:01:02.100 You probably heard this term if you've ever read about the way online search engines work, 00:01:02.100 --> 00:01:06.840 as they store information on webpages in a big index so that Google searches only take 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:10.180 a few fractions of a second instead of hours. 00:01:10.180 --> 00:01:14.780 Similarly, Windows indexes the contents of your hard drive or SSD while your computer 00:01:14.780 --> 00:01:21.080 is at idle. So whenever you go to search for a file, it can bring up index results very quickly. 00:01:21.080 --> 00:01:24.840 So why can searches still take so long to complete then? 00:01:24.840 --> 00:01:28.740 What's going on is that although index results can come up in a few seconds after you type 00:01:28.740 --> 00:01:33.880 in your query, Windows does not index your whole system by default. 00:01:33.880 --> 00:01:38.680 Notably, the users folder containing personal documents, downloads, and data such as save 00:01:38.680 --> 00:01:44.200 games will get indexed, but the vast majority of the remainder of your drive will not. 00:01:44.200 --> 00:01:49.720 Additionally, many file types don't have their contents indexed by default either. 00:01:49.720 --> 00:01:55.520 Windows does index the contents of text files such as those with a .txt or .docx extension, 00:01:55.520 --> 00:01:59.600 but won't bother with most other file types, which can make finding what you're looking 00:01:59.600 --> 00:02:05.600 for even more tricky. Once Windows finishes searching through the index, it will then turn through all the non-index 00:02:05.600 --> 00:02:10.080 information on the disk, which the search feature has little to no advanced knowledge 00:02:10.080 --> 00:02:15.840 of, hence the hugely long wait times when searching large sections of your drive. 00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:19.520 Fortunately, the default settings can be tweaked to your liking. 00:02:19.520 --> 00:02:24.120 Bring up the control panel and click indexing options, then modify, where you can choose 00:02:24.120 --> 00:02:27.640 as many folders or drives as you'd like to add to the index. 00:02:27.640 --> 00:02:32.440 You can also click advanced, then file types, if there are certain kinds of files where 00:02:32.440 --> 00:02:40.280 you'd like to have Windows index the entire contents. There's even an option to delete and rebuild the index if you're continually experiencing 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:47.520 issues with the search feature. There's also another way to speed things up when you actually run a search in File Explorer. 00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:56.480 Click view, then options, then the search tab. You'll see an option that's on by default to always search non-index file contents. 00:02:56.480 --> 00:03:00.680 Clearing this option will stop the file search feature from looking through every byte in 00:03:00.680 --> 00:03:05.320 the selected folder or drive, which is often the culprit of the search progress bar seeming 00:03:05.320 --> 00:03:11.720 to hang near the end. But it may cause you to miss some relevant results, so pick your poison. 00:03:11.720 --> 00:03:18.360 Now it may sound like an even better idea is to just index everything on the whole drive, 00:03:18.360 --> 00:03:23.360 including the file contents, but beware that this can take up a lot of system resources 00:03:23.360 --> 00:03:30.080 if you don't have a fast PC. And when you actually finally do go and run a search, it can take a long time for Windows 00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:34.320 to search through an index that large, meaning you might have more or less the same problem 00:03:34.320 --> 00:03:40.560 that you started with. Instead, a good approach is to selectively use the indexing options tool to select only 00:03:40.560 --> 00:03:45.320 folders, drives, and file contents you think you may need to find quickly in the future. 00:03:45.320 --> 00:03:49.320 It might be a bit of a hassle to set up, but it's better than waiting around until you're 00:03:49.320 --> 00:03:55.440 dead. So thanks for watching guys. If you liked this video, hit like, hit subscribe, and hit us up in the comments section with 00:03:55.440 --> 00:03:58.040 your suggestions for videos that we should make in the future.