Alternative Seacrh Tools for Windows 7

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Good day all,

As part of our daily “system” maintenance we search the network drives for the garbage files left behind from programs and users from the previous day
(i.e. *.bak;*.tmp;*.plt;*.log;*.bk*;~*.*;*.err;*.dmp;*junk*;db?.*;*.ac$). Yes, Autocad extensions are a big part of them.

As perhaps archaic as the XP search may be by today’s standards it works and works well. Windows 7 search, while perhaps better designed to help an end-user find a song or picture does not perform well when just looking for a series of file extensions located on network drives.

So, does any one know of or can recommend some alternative search tools that will work similar to the XP seach and most importantly allow for picking specific drive letters to look at and not just the local drives?

regards,
Paul

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Have you tried delving into the indexing properties to enhance the search function?
Some of the attributes can be changed along with the files & folders etc.

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Personally, I would use a PowerShell script to do this, one of the reasons being that you could set it up to run automatically every day (or week or whenever).

Here is a script that will find and delete some of the file types you mentioned from the d: drive:

(“*.bak”, “*.tmp”, “*.plt”, “*.log”) | foreach {dir d: -include $_ -recurse} | foreach {$_.Delete()}

Saves this as a file such as delete-temps.ps1 and add it to the task scheduler.

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I threw the small free program ‘Everything’ from http://www.voidtools.com onto our server, and then under the options had it autostart a ETP/FTP server. Now on my PC I can run ‘Everything’ and under the tools menu connect to the Everything running on the server.

If you make a shortcut you can add a command line search. IE “C:Program Files (x86)EverythingEverything.exe” -search *.tmp|*.??$|*.temp

Now if I double click the icon, connect to the server I’m instantly shown every file with the extension tmp, temp and any three letter extension ending in $

Because the UNC is displayed for the files, you can delete them or move them right from the Everything window.

Works great and is INSTANT. I mainly use this for quickly finding files among 100’s of thousands users have misplaced but recall part of the file name, but would work for your purposes, too.

Cheers,

Nathan

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Good day all,

As part of our daily “system” maintenance we search the network drives for the garbage files left behind from programs and users from the previous day
(i.e. *.bak;*.tmp;*.plt;*.log;*.bk*;~*.*;*.err;*.dmp;*junk*;db?.*;*.ac$). Yes, Autocad extensions are a big part of them.

As perhaps archaic as the XP search may be by today’s standards it works and works well. Windows 7 search, while perhaps better designed to help an end-user find a song or picture does not perform well when just looking for a series of file extensions located on network drives.

So, does any one know of or can recommend some alternative search tools that will work similar to the XP seach and most importantly allow for picking specific drive letters to look at and not just the local drives?

regards,
Paul

Good evening Paul,

If you run Windows 7 64-bit take a look at this and see if it answers all your needs, I use it and it finds all I require and guess what? It’s freeware.

http://www.mythicsof…nsack&page=home

Gloria

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