SwiftSearch

Submit portable freeware that you find here. It helps if you include information like description, extraction instruction, Unicode support, whether it writes to the registry, and so on.
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infimum
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Joined: Sun Mar 02, 2008 1:00 am

SwiftSearch

#1 Post by infimum »

http://sourceforge.net/projects/swiftsearch/
SwiftSearch is a lightweight program whose purpose is to help you quickly find the files you need on your Windows machine without ever requiring you to index your drives. Most search utilities that achieve similar speeds do so by indexing drives while the computer is idle, but because idleness detection is so difficult to get right, in practice they end up slowing down the whole system just to speed up search. SwiftSearch works differently: given administrator privileges, it completely bypasses the file system (only NTFS supported) and reads the file table directly every time, which speeds up search by many orders of magnitude. Typically searches yield full results in ~10 seconds or less, a significant speedup for many users. As a bonus, this program also supports path-based search (for example, you can search for "*Program*\Windows*"), regular expressions (just start the search name with '>' character), and full directory sizes. Its goal is to be simple, swift, and intuitive to use.
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Its settings don't seem to be stored anywhere, therefore portable :mrgreen:

Can anyone confirm this?

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I am Baas
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Re: SwiftSearch

#2 Post by I am Baas »

Requires admin privileges
Does not seem to play well with sandboxie, could not test.

NickR
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Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2010 6:37 am

Re: SwiftSearch

#3 Post by NickR »

I tried this the other day when I needed to search a USB 2TB backup drive in a hurry.

'Everything', which is great, was already running on the fixed drives.
I didn't want to add a huge USB to Everything's config, settings or DB

SwiftSearch : opened straight up, no config needed,
clicked on the drive, entered part of the filename and almost instantly found the files !

I use and trust 'Everything', but I will keep SwiftSearch to hand for jobs like this

Very impressed - Thanks to the devs

also the screen wasn't messed up in any way (on XP)
Edit > ahh... Sorry pardon - My screen shot below looked much better (ie normal) IRL - I habitually minimise the colours for small file sizes
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Marc
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Re: SwiftSearch

#4 Post by Marc »

Unfortunately Everything doesn't allow to search using the last saved database before the initial db update finishes, which for large drives can mean 20 minutes or more (even though I have excluded some drives to speed up the process). Will definitely give it a try, thanks for posting.

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I am Baas
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Re: SwiftSearch

#5 Post by I am Baas »

SwiftSearch is at version 1.5 (2013-09-07)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/swiftsearch/
•F5 - re-index target volume (use this if you have copied files to the same volume since you launched SwiftSearch)
•Ctrl+Search = find all files included deleted files (right-click on result to see file number) - combined with DiskBuddy's ability to read the MFT, that should be enough to tell you where a file is located on the disk.
•Shift+Search = display all NTFS attributes
•ESC - minimise to System Tray (re-indexes every 15 minutes)
http://reboot.pro/topic/18855-windows-f ... t-is-fast/
http://rmprepusb.blogspot.hk/2013/09/fa ... ility.html

Tested: Portable

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I am Baas
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Re: SwiftSearch

#6 Post by I am Baas »

SwiftSearch version 2.1.1 is available.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/swiftsearch/files/

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Midas
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Re: SwiftSearch

#7 Post by Midas »

Thanks, I am Baas. I have been using SwiftSearch quite a bit lately because, contrary to Everything, it doesn't auto launch a database update on startup...

NickR
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Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2010 6:37 am

Re: SwiftSearch

#8 Post by NickR »

@ Midas
Hi
See special version of Everything 1.2.1.371b
This is in effect a 'Read only version' and does not update the existing database.
(or any other Everything database you point it at ;-)
NickR

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Midas
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Re: SwiftSearch

#9 Post by Midas »

Thanks, NickR. I'll check that version -- it still a beta, right? :|

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webfork
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Re: SwiftSearch

#10 Post by webfork »

Still no as-you-type functionality but I do like the open source and license (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License V2.0).

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Midas
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Re: SwiftSearch

#11 Post by Midas »

SwiftSearch v4.1 is released (changelog and download info follows).
http://sourceforge.net/projects/swiftsearch/files/Version%204.1/ wrote:Improvements:
[*]'Browse' and 'Search' buttons
[*]Even lower memory usage, especially for sparsely allocated MFTs
(on my setup this resulted in a 40% decrease from version 4.0)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/swiftsearch/files/Version%204.0/ wrote:This version contains a complete rewrite of this application. It should exhibit significantly lower memory usage and work at a slightly faster speed. (On my system, it is 10% faster and uses 60% less memory.)

A few features in the previous version have NOT yet been added to this rewrite:
[*]No automatic periodic refresh.
[*]No automatic device detection/removal.
[*]No support for showing deleted files or hidden NTFS attributes.

This 32-bit version contains an embedded copy of the 64-bit version which is automatically unpacked and run. However, if you want a plain 64-bit version (e.g. for a Windows PE environment) then you can extract it using a resource editor. Alternatively, if you want a plain 32-bit version then you can delete the 64-bit resource from the executable and the 32-bit version should automatically run.

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I am Baas
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Re: SwiftSearch

#12 Post by I am Baas »

Tested SwiftSearch v4.1 x64 portable

billon
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Re: SwiftSearch

#13 Post by billon »

Latest version 4.2.1

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I am Baas
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Re: SwiftSearch

#14 Post by I am Baas »

billon wrote:Latest version 4.2.1
Thanks billon.

Version 4.2.1 (2015-11-29)
- Minor bug-fix when double-clicking
- Double-clicking opens file instead of parent folder
Version 4.2 (2015-11-29)
- Double-clicking now opens the item instead of opening its container
- Bug fixes and optimizations

billon
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Re: SwiftSearch

#15 Post by billon »

Latest version is 6.1 from 2018-03-19
Version 6.0 (2018-03-11)
  • Lots of new features:
    • Add "Dump to Table" option when right-clicking
    • Show the number of descendents (nested files/folders)
    • Report the storage device read speed in real-time
    • Hide NTFS metadata
    • Fix sorting so that clicking columns is more intuitive
Version 5.1 (2018-02-24)
  • Improved performance dramatically for volumes with lots of contiguous empty file records in the MFT.
Version 5.0.3 (2018-02-22)
  • Bug fixes (fixes crash on Windows XP)
Version 5.0.2 (2018-02-09)
  • Fix pattern matching bugs:
    • ':' should not match drive letter without '\' being present
    • '?' was not handled correctly for wildcards
Version 5.0.1 (2018-02-09)
  • Fixed bug for path matching (C:\* returned empty results)
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