Deep File Divers
We test six powerful desktop search utilities that scour the vast recesses of your PC to uncover long-lost file treasures.Contributing Editor Scott Dunn writes the Windows Tips column. Narasu Rebbapragada is an associate editor for PC World.
Today you're just as likely to search your massive hard drive for image, sound, and video files as you are to do a text search. In recent months several new free programs have launched that search your drive and claim to find these and other nontext files as quickly and accurately as they retrieve text-based ones. The programs offer more options for previewing, sorting, and filtering. And they scan the files on your system to create an index--à la Web search engines--that they use to find your files in the blink of an eye.
The six apps we tested--Blinkx, Copernic Desktop Search, Google Desktop Search, MSN Search Toolbar With Windows Desktop Search, and Yahoo Desktop Search (all free), and DtSearch Corp's $199 DtSearch--vary in how you install and use them, and in how they index your files. They each find different file types, and they diverge in how they present their search results. (Our features comparison chart lists the functions that each tool supports.)
We used the new power-search tools to search a 1MB collection of text, spreadsheet, compressed, image, and audio files on two different PCs (see our chart of the file types and controls each program supports). We placed specific terms in some of the test files themselves, in the file names of others, and in the "metadata" (comments that are embedded with the file) of still others.
Our favorite is Microsoft's MSN Search Toolbar With Windows Desktop Search, even though it failed one of our tests. Copernic Desktop Search is the easiest to use, but it also didn't find some of our test files. For searching only text files--and if you don't mind spending $199--DtSearch is the most likely to find everything you're looking for. A familiar interface wasn't enough to win us over to Google Desktop Search, because it lacks the indexing and sorting options of competing tools.
In this article:
MSN Search Toolbar
MSN Search Toolbar With Windows Desktop Search, our Best Bet winner, can find hundreds of common file types; but you must download and install filters from third-party makers to index the entire contents of PDFs, compressed files, images (GIF, TIFF, JPEG), and other files. Fortunately, many add-ins are free for noncommercial use.
The program places the MSN Search Deskbar on your Windows taskbar, folder windows, and Internet Explorer windows, as well as in Microsoft Outlook. It defaults to searching the desktop, the Web, or your e-mail, whichever is appropriate. You can also launch the Deskbar from the Start, All Programs menu.
Pop-up or context menus in most of the Deskbars give you access to the Options dialog box; there you can set which folders to index and where to store the index file. You can also set a keyboard shortcut for the Deskbar, and toggle the Deskbar between Web and local file searches via buttons in the pop-up results window.
You can refine search results by date, author, attachments (or mail with attachments), file properties, and other options.
The program did a good job of finding our test files, including audio and image files that had keywords embedded as comments. The exceptions were mail messages in Eudora and Thunderbird. But since these two programs aren't supported in the toolbar itself, the fault likely lies with the add-in that was supposed to add these files to our index. More troubling was the program's inability to locate an XML file saved by Microsoft Word, although we encountered no difficulty unearthing an XML file saved in another application. Even rebuilding the index didn't fix this problem.
Windows Desktop Search shows your search results (sorted by file type only) in a pop-up window as you type (see FIGURE 1
Figure 1: Results pop up as you type with Windows Desktop Search, which can float on your desktop or sit in your taskbar.
). Press Enter or click Search Desktop to get the full results window; click an item in the pop-up results to open that file.
If you've installed the program's PDF add-in and you select a PDF to preview, you'll open a version of the Acrobat Reader right inside the preview pane, complete with toolbars (see FIGURE 2
Figure 2: You can view PDF files in the preview pane of Windows Desktop Search's results window.
). Or if you select an audio file among your results, the preview pane will display the controls for playing the found sound.
Copernic Desktop Search
When it comes to ease of use, this program wins hands down. It encourages you to search within its preset categories for the Internet (Web, Images, News, Shopping) or your computer (Emails, Files, Music, Pictures, and more). These categories make working with Copernic Desktop Search incredibly simple.
After the installation you'll see a search box in your taskbar. Type in your keywords and then press Enter to start looking within whichever category (desktop or Web) you last searched. Or use the box's pop-up Category Window to select a different category (see FIGURE 3
Figure 3: Specify your Copernic search file category from the options on the taskbar before or after you search.
).
Refining your search is a simple matter of clicking various options in the results window. The sort options are specific to the file types shown in the list: You can sort documents by Folder, Date, and File Type; music by Folder, Artist, Album, Genre, and Date; and so on.
Copernic is more than just a pretty interface, though. It indexes Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, and other e-mail formats without requiring that you hunt down and install a third-party plug-in.
The program's Preview pane shows a close visual approximation of the files returned. It switches to player controls when you select an audio file in the results window. Text previews have buttons for each keyword you searched for.
On both of our test systems Copernic found one MP3 file based on its metadata but couldn't locate another with the same metadata--even though it had the same keyword in its file name, too. Copernic also can't search compressed files. The program did much better at retrieving images; it was able to search embedded comments to find the JPEG image files stored in our test folder.
Yahoo Desktop Search
This free program claims to support more than 200 file types, although it searches just the file names (not the metadata) of music, image, and other media formats. So, as expected, it found image and music files only when their names included the specific term that we searched for. Apart from this limitation, Yahoo Desktop Search performed very well, even peeking inside PDF and compressed files.
Among numerous advanced options, the program's Favorite Searches pane lets you access previously stored searches. You can also start, stop, and schedule its file indexing (see FIGURE 4
Figure 4: You decide when to index your local files via settings in Yahoo Desktop Search's advanced options.
) and specify the folders and file types to be indexed.
You can choose which of 50 file attributes (such as.msg,.doc,.pdf, and.html) you want to display. You can sort your results by each attribute with a single click, or narrow the search by selecting the Refine button to enter a keyword in a text box under the heading.
The results preview pane can show PDFs and can play media files automatically. It lists the contents of compressed files and folders, but it can't open them.
If you need to search for mail in a program other than Outlook, OE, or Mozilla Thunderbird, you'll have to spend $75 to $130 (depending on the mail programs) to obtain a version of the application from Yahoo's partner, X1 Technologies.
DtSearch
This industrial-strength text-search program is designed for professionals who work with large collections of documents on PCs, on Web servers, and in other archives. At $199, you'd expect it to do more than its free counterparts. Still, you won't see options in the app for searching movie, image, or sound files--except MP3 files.
DtSearch is the most network-friendly of the products we tested. You can store your file index on a shared network drive, which allows multiple users to search using the same index. In addition, you can export 'Option Packages' that contain some or all of your custom search settings so that those, too, can be shared on your network.
The product's advanced search options require you only to point and click--you don't have to remember the arcane syntax of a query language. For example, in the Search dialog box you type your search term, and then you refine the criteria via buttons for the operators and, or, not, w/5 (within 5 words), or w/25 (within 25 words; see FIGURE 5
Figure 5: Advanced searches become much easier when you use DtSearch's simple point-and-click Search dialog box.
). You can alter the search request by typing additional syntax or other modifiers (say, by adding not before 'w/5' so the search words are at least six words apart); or search for synonyms or related words.
As you might expect, in our tests this powerhouse search tool had no difficulty finding the text-related files, but it completely ignored the sound and image test files. DtSearch's preview pane includes buttons that permit you to navigate to found text within each document in the results list. The preview approximates the formatting of the original; PDFs preview the best since DtSearch contains its own copy of Acrobat Reader (you can open the returned PDFs in an external Adobe Reader window as well). And unlike some of the other search tools covered here, DtSearch can preview documents even when they're compressed.
Google Desktop Search
Google's Web search power comes to your personal data with this program. Because it runs in a browser (mostly), it feels like the same old Google. You can place the utility's search box in your taskbar or on your desktop, and from there use it to search the Web as well as your local files.
Google Desktop Search works with Microsoft Office, music, image, and other common file types, and it even searches your AOL Instant Message chats. Surprisingly, it omits Rich Text Format, compressed, XML, and other popular file types, although you can download plug-ins to search for these and other files.
In our tests the program found most of the file types it supports, including Thunderbird mail. Oddly, it found one image file based on the file's metadata, but it couldn't find another similar file. The same problem occurred with our MP3 tests: one hit, one miss. Google Desktop Search also failed to find files that had our search term only in their name, a task it should have performed easily.
Don't look for a preview pane with your googled results (although you do get an excerpt of the file with your search term in context). Instead you'll see the familiar Google search page in your browser with links that launch the files in the associated application. One exception is image files; the results page includes a thumbnail of the found image next to its listing.
After you install the tool, you may be surprised to see your local files included in the results of your Google Web searches. Fortunately, the local files are in a separate section at the top of the results page. Google insists that your local information isn't sent to anybody over the Web. Still, for peace of mind you can turn off this feature on the Preferences page (see FIGURE 6
Figure 6: Keep your local file searches private by unchecking this option on Google Desktop Search's Preferences page.
).
You are not offered any choice in Google Desktop Search as to the drive or folder in which your index will be stored. Nor can you specify the folders to index, although you can indicate the URLs and folders the indexing should avoid. This means that if you have only one folder out of a dozen you'll ever want to search, you may have to do a lot of typing of file paths to designate the folders Google should skip--or just live with Google taking up extra processing time and disk space. There is also no way to schedule when indexing occurs, but you can pause the index process if it's slowing your machine while you work.
For more information about the beta release of the upcoming Google Desktop 2, see "First Look: Google Grabs Space on Your Desktop."
Blinkx
This product analyzes the contents of your files and serves up the files similar to the document you're using, without your having to do any actual searching. It places a toolbar in Windows Explorer and at the top of your Microsoft Word and Outlook windows. The toolbar's buttons lead to documents, newsgroups, and Web pages with information related to the contents of the file you currently have open.
This paradigm shift in searching continues in Blinkx's search results window. The top of the window displays buttons assigned to Web Search, News Search, Video Search, Shopping Channel, Blogs Search, and Search All. These aren't very useful for unearthing local files, however. You can uncheck Web-related options in the Channel Picker section of the Settings dialog box and restart the search--but when we did that, we still ended up having some Web content in our results.
Blinkx doesn't place a search box in your taskbar or on IE or Windows Explorer toolbars (MSN Search Toolbar, Google Desktop Search, and Yahoo Desktop Search all provide one). To perform a search, you open the main Blinkx search window by double-clicking its system tray icon or by launching it from a Start menu or desktop shortcut. Blinkx claims to search audio and image files, but in our tests it failed to find them via keywords embedded in their comments. The program did better when the file names included the keywords, but even then it didn't find one of our test MP3 files when we searched for it by name. You can't tell Blinkx where to put the index itself, either, which can be annoying if your Windows drive is running short of space.
Holding your pointer over a file name in the results window displays it in the preview pane (see FIGURE 7
Figure 7: Hover--don't click--if you want to see only a preview of a file listed in the Blinkx search results window.
). Image and HTML files render quite well, but document previews show the file's text with minimal formatting. Click an item to launch it in its associated application.
MSN Search Toolbar Tops File Searchers (chart)
Desktop search tools vary in the amount of control they give you over how you search, and how you can tweak your results.
File Searchers Work With Different Files, in Different Ways (chart)
The file types that search programs can index--and the controls that the utilities provide users--vary widely.
Mac Search: Apple's Search Spotlight
Unlike their Windows counterparts, Mac users don't need to bolt a search engine onto their OS. The powerful Spotlight desktop search tool, built into Mac X OS 10.4 (aka Tiger), quickly finds files on hard drives, mounted network volumes, and external drives, with some not-so-insignificant limitations. (The upcoming Windows Vista will have built-in file search features.)
After Spotlight indexes your drives, you'll see an oval search field in Finder windows and the menu bar. You can designate which folders Spotlight should--or shouldn't--search. It recognizes video codec, image exposure, and other metadata, and it supports search strings, such as "yosemite kind:images" (for finding all pictures of the Yosemite Valley). You can save searches as Smart Folders, which are collections of dynamically updated search results.
Unfortunately, Spotlight does not understand such standard search operators as near, and it requires you to add a separate plug-in to search for files in non-Apple mail clients like Microsoft Entourage and Eudora. The tool also can't display nongraphic search results with context: You can't see the first few lines in a Word document, for example (you'll have to identify the file by its name or path). If users were that organized to begin with, they wouldn't need Spotlight, right?
Narasu Rebbapragada