My PC is old and slow. In Options > Indexes, the user can select what data to index and also select items for fast sorting.
I am surprised to see the popup info say that storing extra info in the index can slow down Everything. Surely extra info needs only extra storage and doesn't affect search performance?
If it turns out that selecting an extra index type does uses more resources then is having an extra index field more or less resource hungry than fast sorting the same field?
Performance of (1) extra index fields and (2) fast sorting
Re: Performance of (1) extra index fields and (2) fast sorting
Some of this extra indexing information has a CPU usage cost to keep it up-to-date. Recent changes will need to keep an internal recent change index up-to-date. Folder size information needs to be calculated every time a child file size changes. Other extra indexing information only requires more memory.
Fast sorting needs to keep a separate index up-to-date for each type. Every time a file or folder is created, deleted or modified this index will need to be updated. "Everything" is efficient at keeping these indexes up to date. However, with all these fast sort options enabled, you may experience slower updating performance on slower computers.
Only enable what fields are useful to you, if you don't use date modified, or don't use recent changes, you can disable them.
Generally, the usefulness of fast size and date modified sorting outweighs any performance loss.
Also, when sorting by a 'fast sort', search performance is reduced slightly, because memory access is no longer linear.
For the best performance, sort by name ascending.
Fast sorting needs to keep a separate index up-to-date for each type. Every time a file or folder is created, deleted or modified this index will need to be updated. "Everything" is efficient at keeping these indexes up to date. However, with all these fast sort options enabled, you may experience slower updating performance on slower computers.
Only enable what fields are useful to you, if you don't use date modified, or don't use recent changes, you can disable them.
Generally, the usefulness of fast size and date modified sorting outweighs any performance loss.
Also, when sorting by a 'fast sort', search performance is reduced slightly, because memory access is no longer linear.
For the best performance, sort by name ascending.