Hard Drive Plunder Yields Unknown Treasure
Is your hard drive akin to hundreds of year old tropical forest? Mine is – the whole 160 virtual acres of it. And that’s only one computer. I cringe when I think of sorting through stuff or even trying to organize it. This is definitely one of the drawbacks of obscenely huge drives. Whenever something goes in, it seems like it’s almost impossible to find when I need it.
Do you feel that way? Don’t get me wrong. For the most part I’m pretty organized with my hard drive. I’ve got stuff filed in neat folders and I usually know where to find the most commonly used stuff yet sometimes despite my best efforts of searching some files still slip through the crack into virtual oblivion. Well actually it’s only hidden to the human eye.
A while back, someone asked me about desktop search software, if I had some other suggestion other than Google Desktop, Yahoo or even MSN. Then, I didn’t like desktop search programs because I tried one and boy did it suck my resources big time. To make it worse, each time I wanted to find and open a file it seems the darn thing would kick into high gear slowing my computer down considerably and mind you, I have a fast PC.
A month ago, forced into action by the rapidly growing jungle in my computer, I tried Copernic Desktop Search and I’m truly surprised at this thing. It’s not only fast but it does it’s job without getting in my way. The nice part about it is it can search network drives (those not on my computer). I can quickly filter my search by file, image, videos, music and get this.. email. To me the email part is the clincher because I don’t use Outlook, I use Thunderbird. And unlike Outlook, there are few tools that
work with Thunderbird. So now, I don’t even have to power up Thunderbird just to search the emails (yet another virtual jungle). That is sweet. Since using Copernic, I’ve found so many files I just never realized was there or completely forgotten about.
The tool is free, and I recommend Copernic Desktop Search.
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Hi Lynette,
Wow! I installed Copernic Desktop Utility and what a breath of fresh air!
BTW: It was me you were talking with about the Google, Yahoo and MSN desktop search options back in Nov’05. Since then I’ve been using MSN desktop search (the best of the big 3 – IMHO).
But what a difference Copernic makes. Like you say MSN is a total resource hog (as are the Google and Yahoo desktop search utilities). And none of the big 3 utilities are very good at obeying simple commands like… “stop indexing my @$%!($@ hard drive – I’m trying to work here!”
Copernic runs lite and lean in the background… you hardly know it’s there… except of course when you need to call on it to search your hard drive.
There are so many things I like about the Copernic Desktop Search Utility… including file specific searching for just image files with thumbnail views included in the search results – very nice!… searching for just audio files… searching for files of a specific size, date, etc – Nice, nice, nice!
And the preview window pane is beautiful – complete with automatic highlighting of the keywords you are searching for. You don’t even need to open the original documents on your hard drive if you don’t want to!
But what I like most is that I can tell Copernic exactly where to search on my hard drive… right down to a very specific subfolder. This comes in handy when you have libraries of articles on specific topics accumulating in specific subfolders.
Some of my library subfolders have 100’s and 100’s of articles in them all on the topic of, let’s say Kids Room Decor. But what if I want to only find the articles that have information about Murals for Kids Rooms. A manual search would be way too time consuming. Copernic to the rescue!
Two thumbs up for Copernic Desktop Searching, especially since it’s free. I’m guessing that their other ‘paid-for’ products would be worthy of investigation too.
Thanks Lynette (once again) for keeping us informed about these great tech tools that we would never know about if it weren’t for the valuable insights you provide.
Cheers,
Doug.
PS: I’ve got another tech dilemma that you may be able to solve… and that some of your other readers may be experiencing as well. It’s in regards to disappearing icon’s in the WinXP System Tray. Not sure where to submit the question though….?
Hi Lynette,
Wow! I installed Copernic Desktop Utility and what a breath of fresh air!
BTW: It was me you were talking with about the Google, Yahoo and MSN desktop search options back in Nov’05. Since then I’ve been using MSN desktop search (the best of the big 3 – IMHO).
But what a difference Copernic makes. Like you say MSN is a total resource hog (as are the Google and Yahoo desktop search utilities). And none of the big 3 utilities are very good at obeying simple commands like… “stop indexing my @$%!($@ hard drive – I’m trying to work here!”
Copernic runs lite and lean in the background… you hardly know it’s there… except of course when you need to call on it to search your hard drive.
There are so many things I like about the Copernic Desktop Search Utility… including file specific searching for just image files with thumbnail views included in the search results – very nice!… searching for just audio files… searching for files of a specific size, date, etc – Nice, nice, nice!
And the preview window pane is beautiful – complete with automatic highlighting of the keywords you are searching for. You don’t even need to open the original documents on your hard drive if you don’t want to!
But what I like most is that I can tell Copernic exactly where to search on my hard drive… right down to a very specific subfolder. This comes in handy when you have libraries of articles on specific topics accumulating in specific subfolders.
Some of my library subfolders have 100’s and 100’s of articles in them all on the topic of, let’s say Kids Room Decor. But what if I want to only find the articles that have information about Murals for Kids Rooms. A manual search would be way too time consuming. Copernic to the rescue!
Two thumbs up for Copernic Desktop Searching, especially since it’s free. I’m guessing that their other ‘paid-for’ products would be worthy of investigation too.
Thanks Lynette (once again) for keeping us informed about these great tech tools that we would never know about if it weren’t for the valuable insights you provide.
Cheers,
Doug.
PS: I’ve got another tech dilemma that you may be able to solve… and that some of your other readers may be experiencing as well. It’s in regards to disappearing icon’s in the WinXP System Tray. Not sure where to submit the question though….?
Hey Doug, you pointed out the exact same things I just LOVE about Copernic the specific folder search and the file type with just one button. I use that so much you just don’t know. And like you said, I too have articles tons and tons where you just know something was mentioned in there like a reference to a website but can’t find it – this is awesome for stuff like that. Really glad it helped you and I remember it was you who asked 🙂 I remember all your questions.
On the XP Tray thing. I’ve had the same issue it’s something that requires some kinda tweak can’t even remember where I found the solution but I’ll put up a post when I find it again.
Hey Doug, you pointed out the exact same things I just LOVE about Copernic the specific folder search and the file type with just one button. I use that so much you just don’t know. And like you said, I too have articles tons and tons where you just know something was mentioned in there like a reference to a website but can’t find it – this is awesome for stuff like that. Really glad it helped you and I remember it was you who asked 🙂 I remember all your questions.
On the XP Tray thing. I’ve had the same issue it’s something that requires some kinda tweak can’t even remember where I found the solution but I’ll put up a post when I find it again.