Explanation of Journals and other questions

[rollsch]

I have an extremely fast computer and performance is not an issue. What do these journals do and why would I decrease/increase them? What would be the affects if I did?



Fast X sort I assume adds an index for that column to improve sorting/searching speed but increases the database size. Is the speed improvement of sorting/searching on these columns worth the overhead of making the database size larger? (eg would it decrease performance of other items



When/why would I change the USN journal size?

3rd question. I have some folders that are modified very regularly and I don't need to see those changes reflected in search immediately. Eg temporary folders or source code build directories. Is there a way to tell everything that I don't really care about these folders and to index them slowly (and hence improve performance of everything else)?

4th question. I want to remove the following folder from the index as it always shows up first instead of the actual file I want. How do I permamently exclude a folder from the index?
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent

[void]

What do these journals do and why would I decrease/increase them? What would be the affects if I did?

The Index Journal is a log of all changes to your index.
It can be useful for tracking changes to your file systems.

The maximum size controls how many changes Everything will keep in the journal log.

You can view the Journal log from the Index menu and clicking on Index Journal.
The default is 1MB which holds about 5000 file changes.

Increase the maximum journal size if you would like Everything to remember more changes at the cost of more RAM usage.

Fast X sort I assume adds an index for that column to improve sorting/searching speed but increases the database size. Is the speed improvement of sorting/searching on these columns worth the overhead of making the database size larger? (eg would it decrease performance of other items

Enabling fast sort will build and maintain separate indexes for each property.
The initial build and sort can take a few seconds.
Maintaining these indexes is very efficient.
There shouldn't be any noticeable performance different once the initial index is built.

Each fast sort index will require about 8MB per 1 million files.

Just enable what you need.

When/why would I change the USN journal size?

The USN Journal contains file system changes to your volume.
The USN Journal is maintained by your NTFS driver (not Everything).
The USN Journal takes up physical space on your drive.

You shouldn't ever need to change the USN Journal maximum size.
32768 KB will store about a days worth of changes on Windows 10+

When you start Everything, your index will be updated from the USN Journal.
If you have not run Everything for a day, Everything will be unable to update its existing index from the USN Journal.
Everything will automatically perform a reindex as the earlier USN Journal entries would have been overwritten.

I recommend a maximum size of 131072 KB for Windows 10+
Leave Allocation delta as: 4096 KB - 8192 KB

The default maximum size is typically: 32768 KB
The default allocation delta is typically: 4096 KB

You can access the USN Journal with the recent changes database in Everything.

3rd question. I have some folders that are modified very regularly and I don't need to see those changes reflected in search immediately. Eg temporary folders or source code build directories. Is there a way to tell everything that I don't really care about these folders and to index them slowly (and hence improve performance of everything else)?

Everything 1.5 will have an option to pause the index from Index -> Pause Updates.
PAUSED is shown in the status bar when indexing is paused.

Is Everything slowing your system when many file system changes are made?

Please check out the ntfs_update_thread_mode_background ini setting.

When enabled, Everything will only update your index when there is no disk IO.

To enable ntfs_update_thread_mode_background:

• Copy and paste the following into your Everything search box:
  /ntfs_update_thread_mode_background=1
• Press ENTER in your Everything search box.
• If successful, ntfs_update_thread_mode_background=1 is shown in the status bar for a few seconds.

Just be aware if there is constant disk IO, Everything may never update.

4th question. I want to remove the following folder from the index as it always shows up first instead of the actual file I want. How do I permamently exclude a folder from the index?
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent

To exclude C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent from your "Everything" index:

• In "Everything", from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Exclude tab
• Click Add Folder....
• Select the %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent folder and click OK.
• Click OK.

Excluding files/folders

[raccoon]

Simple answer to your question about fast sort: If you don't enable those, you will have to wait several seconds when clicking on those column headers on-demand. If you find yourself sorting any of those columns, then you definitely want them.

[rollsch]

Fantastic answer @void

Is Everything slowing your system when many file system changes are made?

Please check out the ntfs_update_thread_mode_background ini setting.

Could it slow down my system when doing builds/development that might create/delete thousands of files?

Is it possible to run it on a trigger/threshold or make any overhead from these temporary directories neglible?

One more question. Is there a way to artificially change the sort metric on some folder locations. Eg when you sort by a column, could it do the SQL equivalent of "Order by X then by Y" where X is the column I clicked on, then Y is an arbitrary "sort last" metric. That way I could put my system/local temporary folders as a "de prioritise in search results" list. So if I sort by date and there is 2 copies of a file, one temporary and one the "real" one, it would show the "real" one first despite the temporary one potentially being newer.

I've excluded my Recent Items folders for this reason, as I don't want to see a .lnk file before the real file when doing a sort by date, but I also don't want to totally remove them from the index.

[void]

Thank you for your feedback rollsch,

Could it slow down my system when doing builds/development that might create/delete thousands of files?

thousands of files - No.
10s of thousands of files - No.
100s of thousands of files - You might start to notice Everything using some CPU here to process changes.

Generally, Everything is very efficient when maintaining your index.

The most expensive thing in Everything 1.4 is renaming large folders (with 100,000s of files).
Everything needs to re-add all the children in the renamed folder.

Everything 1.5 will be even more efficient and handles large folder renames instantly.

Is it possible to run it on a trigger/threshold or make any overhead from these temporary directories neglible?

There's no trigger threshold, I will consider an option to do this.
Everything will do updates in batches then sleep for a second.
You can control this sleep with the monitor_update_delay ini setting.

To set Everything to sleep for 30 seconds after processing a batch of file system changes:

• Copy and paste the following into your Everything search box:
  /monitor_update_delay=30000
• Press ENTER in your Everything search box.
• If successful, monitor_update_delay=30000 is shown in the status bar for a few seconds.
  where 30000 is the number of milliseconds to sleep.
  1000 is the default.

One more question. Is there a way to artificially change the sort metric on some folder locations. Eg when you sort by a column, could it do the SQL equivalent of "Order by X then by Y" where X is the column I clicked on, then Y is an arbitrary "sort last" metric. That way I could put my system/local temporary folders as a "de prioritise in search results" list. So if I sort by date and there is 2 copies of a file, one temporary and one the "real" one, it would show the "real" one first despite the temporary one potentially being newer.

In Everything 1.4, no.
In Everything 1.5, yes.

You can use the View -> Sort by -> Advanced sort to set secondary and tertiary sorts.
or you can hold down shift when clicking a column header to set a secondary sort.

I've excluded my Recent Items folders for this reason, as I don't want to see a .lnk file before the real file when doing a sort by date, but I also don't want to totally remove them from the index.

For Everything 1.4, please try creating a filter:

• In Everything, from the Search menu, click Add to filters....
• Change the Name to: No Recent
• Change the Search to: !"C:\Users\<your-username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent"
• Click OK.

Filters can be activated from the Search menu, Filter bar (View -> Filters), right clicking the status bar, filter macro or filter keyboard shortcut.

Everything 1.5 has omit results.

[ChrisGreaves]

3rd question. I have some folders that are modified very regularly and I don't need to see those changes reflected in search immediately. Eg temporary 4th question. I want to remove the following folder from the index as it always shows up first instead of the actual file I want. How do I permamently

My knowledge of Everything.exe is slowly approaching novice level, so I won't comment from the Everything.exe point of view.
On the other hand my knowledge of my personal foibles is exceeding rich, hence:-

Everything.exe is fast. Rumors abound that Everything.exe can find a light-beam before it is even sent!

That said, unless you can identify and document a specific instance where a folder(tree) is slowing your work down, I would caution against excluding folders from being indexed, slowly, or not at all, because from time to time our fingers slip when we issue "paste" after "cut", and there will be a day (or more likely, a late-night-session) when your fingers slip and your EmployeeTimeSheets.MDB ends up in "C:\Users\Chris075\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Background Tasks Profiles\6ajxhti6.MozillaBackgroundTask-308046B0AF4A39CB-backgroundupdate\crashes\events" or similar.

If you have excluded the folder tree "C:\Users\Chris075\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\" from an index, how will you find the file that you need in order to pay your 100,000 employees on tonight's payroll run?
Just a thought

Cheers, Chris