How to search for files faster in FAR manager?

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jonib
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How to search for files faster in FAR manager?

Post by jonib »

Hi

I have discovered I spend too much time searching for files on my computer.

When I saw a plugin "Fast Files Vista" that uses Windows Desktop search, I thought this might be what I needed, now I am testing it and another plugin "Indexed Search" but they seem to search by content and specific file types only.

I need something that searches for all files by name and content as a bonus only, is there something like this that works with FAR manager?

jonib
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t-rex
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Post by t-rex »

jonib
AltF7?
jonib
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Post by jonib »

t-rex wrote:jonib
AltF7?
Incredible :shock: I never knew that :lol:

But seriously, I'm asking for a "faster" way to search for files like the plugins in my last post, but that searches all files and not only specific file types.

AltF7 search is great, but I have too many files it is taking too long to search, a quick test took me 15 minutes to search all my harddrives and I'm hoping there is a faster way.

jonib
pepak
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Post by pepak »

It shouldn't be too difficult to write a plugin which would use either some relational database or possibly some fast data structure (e.g. hash tables or tries) for searching files. What would be difficult would be keeping the database (data structure) up to date.

Personally, I find that a good organization beats a good search - most of the time, I don't search because I know exactly where to look.
jonib
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Location: Sweden

Post by jonib »

I think I have found what I was looking for "Google Desktop Search" it indexes all files and I can search with filename and/or content.

And I found a plugin "GDSCLI", thats a command line interface that I can use to search and output to a Temporary Panel in FAR manager.
xxbbcc
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Post by xxbbcc »

I agree with pepak - having a good folder hierarchy will do wonders - no amoung of indexing will do that. I also rarely have to use the search feature but even then I always use it on a specific set of folders, never entire hard drives, since I always know where a given file might be. It's always fast for this reason.
jonib
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Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:00 am
Location: Sweden

Post by jonib »

xxbbcc wrote:I agree with pepak - having a good folder hierarchy will do wonders - no amoung of indexing will do that. I also rarely have to use the search feature but even then I always use it on a specific set of folders, never entire hard drives, since I always know where a given file might be. It's always fast for this reason.
Sorry for the late reply, I had to cool down first. :D

xxbbcc If you don't want to help you don't have to post just to show how organized you are as you have no idea what I need to search for and why.

Now I have found 2 programs that can find files fast and that don't even use an index and that works fine with FAR manager.

First a free one:NTFS Direct File Find
It's a command line utility that works on local NTFS partitions only, It can search one drive at a time.

To search my 5 harddisks with 1.5 terabytes takes 2-3 minutes.

And a pay($30) one with a trial: FindOnClick
It's a GUI program but has support for the command line and can search other filesystems then NTFS. it's $30 but comes with 7 other utilities.

To search my 5 harddisks with 1.5 terabytes takes 15-30 seconds. :shock:

With both programs I used 5 commands in parallel one per harddisk to search all harddisks at the same time, if run in serial it would take upto 5 times longer.

jonib.
HaRT
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Post by HaRT »

jonib
Do you have an NDFF distributive you can share?
All download links seem to point to the dead homepage… :(
jonib
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Location: Sweden

Post by jonib »

HaRT wrote:jonib
Do you have an NDFF distributive you can share?
All download links seem to point to the dead homepage… :(
These links seem to work for me.
Download link: http://ndff.hotbox.ru/bin/0.9.6/dl.en.html
Direct download link: http://ndff.hotbox.ru/bin/0.9.6/ndff.exe
HaRT
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Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 6:33 pm
Location: St. Petersburg, Russia

Post by HaRT »

jonib
Thanks for confirming the URLs. Something is wrong with routing here. They open OK when I connect via my customer's US network.
nightroman
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Post by nightroman »

FYI: my antivirus blocked the file ndff.exe, due to "one or two viruses found".
jonib
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Post by jonib »

Hi nightroman
nightroman wrote:FYI: my antivirus blocked the file ndff.exe, due to "one or two viruses found".
What antivirus do you have?
and did it say it suspected a virus or that it was a virus?

I redownloaded ndff.exe from the link I posted and it is the same as the one I have downloaded a year ago that seems to be clean as I have scanned it with 3 different Antiviruses (Avira Antivir,Norton Antivirus and avast! antivirus).

The program uses low level access to the file system and the antivirus might believe it could be a virus.

jonib
nightroman
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Post by nightroman »

jonib

I don't really know what antivirus is used in our company - I just got this brief message with no more details and the file was not downloaded.

Sorry for a false alarm (if it is), but I think it is better to be a little bit cautious than an easy target.
jonib
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Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:00 am
Location: Sweden

Post by jonib »

nightroman wrote:jonib

I don't really know what antivirus is used in our company - I just got this brief message with no more details and the file was not downloaded.
An antivirus that a company uses is probably configured to be very restrictive and stops any file that uses "virus" like features such as low level access to the filesystem.
Sorry for a false alarm (if it is), but I think it is better to be a little bit cautious than an easy target.
Caution is necessary when using the internet, unfortunately antivirus programs sometimes find "virus" like functions in programs and assumes it's a virus.

jonib
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