Kurt Hanson Posted December 3, 2010 Share Posted December 3, 2010 I installed today an Intel 120Gb SSD in my 3-1/2 year old Dell laptop (E1405, 2GB memory) hoping to keep its performance acceptable for a bit longer. The laptop O/S was Win 7 which had been installed over Vista about a year ago (update install not a clean install). I migrated to the SSD by doing a restore of my old hard drive image from a WHS backup file. The restore went smoothly after which I used the Intel SSD Tool Box and SSD Tweak Utility to tune the SSD and O/S parameters (i.e., trim, prefetch, defrag, indexing, etc.). The system is running well as far as I can tell. My only issue/question is regards to indexing and whether by disabling it I have lost some of the quick searching capability in Win 7. First, the tuning applications only disabled the index service that runs in background. They left the indexing attribute on the file contents for the SSD (accessed via the properties menu for the drive letter). I manually disabled the attribute. Was that necessary with index service turned off? Second, I am a frequent user of the "Search programs and files" box accessed from the Windows key. It doesn't seem as though the searching is finding any of my files (e.g., .doc's, .pdf's), either by name or contents. Did disabling the index service disable my search capability? Thanks, Kurt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
usacomp2k3 Posted December 3, 2010 Share Posted December 3, 2010 That is exactly what the indexing is useful for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Hanson Posted December 3, 2010 Author Share Posted December 3, 2010 I guess I had not picked up from the admonitions to disable indexing following the installation of a SSD that it would disable all searching not just indexed searching. In order to restore searching, I've restarted indexing but have reduced the included locations to those that I think are value added to me. I assume the consequence of having indexing enabled is that the maintenance of the index tables will prematurely exhaust the limited number of writes to areas of the SSD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrossco Posted December 3, 2010 Share Posted December 3, 2010 I guess I had not picked up from the admonitions to disable indexing following the installation of a SSD that it would disable all searching not just indexed searching. This is what I dislike most about alot of these sites that blindly repost. You'll find that the indexing service needs to run, especially if you plan on taking your laptop to the office and want to search file servers, or you connect a USB spinning-plater drive. As you've discovered, the best way adjust indexing on your SSD is to use the Indexing Options dialog on your Windows 7 machine and tweak the locations that are indexed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dvn Posted December 3, 2010 Share Posted December 3, 2010 This is what I dislike most about alot of these sites that blindly repost. You'll find that the indexing service needs to run, especially if you plan on taking your laptop to the office and want to search file servers, or you connect a USB spinning-plater drive. As you've discovered, the best way adjust indexing on your SSD is to use the Indexing Options dialog on your Windows 7 machine and tweak the locations that are indexed. Sites certainly do echo a lot of inaccurate info. When trying to understand new tech or anything else, it's a pain and a time-waster. I also had to figure this one out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kermi Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 (edited) This is what I dislike most about alot of these sites that blindly repost. You'll find that the indexing service needs to run, especially if you plan on taking your laptop to the office and want to search file servers, or you connect a USB spinning-plater drive. As you've discovered, the best way adjust indexing on your SSD is to use the Indexing Options dialog on your Windows 7 machine and tweak the locations that are indexed. You are aware, that you can also change the location of the indexing DB? Move it to a platter drive, and quit worrying (bit hard on a laptop tho).. Edited December 4, 2010 by kermi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dvn Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 You are aware, that you can also change the location of the indexing DB? Move it to a platter drive, and quit worrying (bit hard on a laptop tho).. Yes, right. I actually did that, along with temp and Firefox cache. Open Indexing Options, click Advanced Options and enter a new Index location. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pcdoc Posted December 5, 2010 Share Posted December 5, 2010 I installed today an Intel 120Gb SSD in my 3-1/2 year old Dell laptop (E1405, 2GB memory) hoping to keep its performance acceptable for a bit longer. The laptop O/S was Win 7 which had been installed over Vista about a year ago (update install not a clean install). I migrated to the SSD by doing a restore of my old hard drive image from a WHS backup file. The restore went smoothly after which I used the Intel SSD Tool Box and SSD Tweak Utility to tune the SSD and O/S parameters (i.e., trim, prefetch, defrag, indexing, etc.). The system is running well as far as I can tell. My only issue/question is regards to indexing and whether by disabling it I have lost some of the quick searching capability in Win 7. First, the tuning applications only disabled the index service that runs in background. They left the indexing attribute on the file contents for the SSD (accessed via the properties menu for the drive letter). I manually disabled the attribute. Was that necessary with index service turned off? Second, I am a frequent user of the "Search programs and files" box accessed from the Windows key. It doesn't seem as though the searching is finding any of my files (e.g., .doc's, .pdf's), either by name or contents. Did disabling the index service disable my search capability? Thanks, Kurt There is some confusion here. You do not need to disable the service only the the indexing attribute, especially if you you have spindle drives attached to the system somewhere. Somehow what you have is backwards. I have been running an SSD since they came out and have no issues with searching at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Hanson Posted December 6, 2010 Author Share Posted December 6, 2010 There is some confusion here. You do not need to disable the service only the the indexing attribute, especially if you you have spindle drives attached to the system somewhere. Somehow what you have is backwards. I have been running an SSD since they came out and have no issues with searching at all. Thanks for the clarification. The SSD is the only drive on the laptop. The only spindles being searched are on the Homeserver which has its index service running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pcdoc Posted December 6, 2010 Share Posted December 6, 2010 Thanks for the clarification. The SSD is the only drive on the laptop. The only spindles being searched are on the Homeserver which has its index service running. I would still not disable the service and only remove it off the drive properties. Good luck and let me know if that works better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now