Search Portable Media?

Search Portable Media?

• KimI129598

  Hi Larry,

  If you're question is "Can I do this " the answer is Yes. The bigger question is will this be useful Probably not. If you use a USB drive where the same files will be available from the same media source every time, then probably yes.

  Here's the problem... When you index or add a path to the index it builds a list of URLS/paths to que to search. Now in the case of a CD if you put the same CD in every time you should be fine. However if you put another CD in the drive the indexer will go to take a look, now that the media is available and see a whole new file structure and index that data, deleting the previous information for that media source/path.

  This is because as far as the indexer knows you have formatted the media and populated it with new data (i.e. Data on the drive has changed and the indexer updates itself to reflect the current data), thus the old data it gathered from that drive/path/url is no longer valid. To the indexer it's the same as if you were to delete a folder tree in My Docs and copied new folders over...

  Now if it goes to index and the media during an incremental index or if you hit Index Now and the drive/media is unavailable it will skip it until it can properly crawl the drive/path/url.

  So if you are like me and put in a data cd with project data and it's indexed, then you get an unmanageable need to hear your favorite CD and inadvertently replace your data CD with the latest <insert artist here> CD, you may find that <Artist of choice> songs have replaced your Project Data in the index for that drive/path/url.

  Similarly if you use one removable drive things should go well. However when you put another removable drive that has the same path in the system (i.e. the F drive), you will run the risk of the indexer dumping your old information for the new information as the data at that drive/path/url has changed and the indexer will remove old data and index the new to reflect the change to that drive/path/url.

  Also it's important to note that if you do index removable media, the preview for that data will be stored in the Indexer and visible, but when you try to open, edit or move that data, if the media is not connected, it will fail since it can not access the path associated with that item.

  I hope this helps!!

  
  
  

• JFox

  Hi,

   

  From what you are saying indexing a portable usb drive should not be an issue.  I did index some usb drive and it seems to work fine for a while.  But sometimes the index will purge the drives data and I will have to re-index these drive again.  I am not sure if that happen because the drive was unplug. 

  Should the index be kept while unplugged for a certain time  

  Is there any particular settings that I should pay attention to in order to keep the index complete or creating incremental backup of the index would work better

  And my last question would be is it possible that Windows Line OneCare would have something to do with this index lost because it has perform a Tune-up

   

  Thank you

  
  
• Search Portable Media?