There's a really nice tool named Everything. It searches the entire computer by filename only, and it does so in a matter of seconds. It has in fact been made portable by someone, but I would love to see it integrated in the PortableApps menu!
The link to the opensource program is here: http://www.voidtools.com/
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but theres a link to a portable version at the site. Here: http://www.voidtools.com/Everything-1.2.1.371.zip
1) Right-click your PortableApps menu, choose Explore.
2) Go into PortableApps.
3) Make a folder, call it Everything.
4) Download the zip file listed above.
5) Open it with 7-Zip Portable or similar.
6) Unpack it to your newly created Everything folder.
7) On your PortableApps.com menu 1.5.2 click Options, then Refresh App Icons.
8) Everything should be listed on your PortableApps.com menu, so long as it's in the root folder.
9) Right click it and rename it (optional)
Should be good to go.
yeah but it would be nice to just have a search box in the menu itself.
The primary problem would be that everything is NTFS only, and we regularly have problems reported here that are due to NTFS access rights on portable drives. If Everything were embedded in the platform, it would be implicit that PortableApps.com were somehow recommending NTFS over FAT32 for pendrives, which is definitely not the case.
Also, many people do not want to have such a search, and for those of us with larger drives, the indexing and updating (say, of my 500Gb passport drive with over 200,000 files on it) would take a significant time. It is currently simple for someone to set everything up for themselves if they so wish, and in doing so, they are likely to actually configure it appropriately to their use of the drive and document locations. Search tools that are on by default all too often have poor configurations to try to capture the "general case".
I believe that you'd be surprised at the speed of the program. I was. It might be a good idea to actually give the program a spin before declaring it too slow.
You are right, though. NTFS-only is an issue. In the standard usage for PortableApps, the user is never really sure what version of Windows they will find themselves on, let alone the formatting of the drives.
neutron1132 (at) usa (dot) com
my apologies, it really is a lot faster than I thought it would be - it takes a little under 5 seconds to index (or refresh the index for) that 500Gb drive.
But then, I wouldn't really want even a 5 second delay every time I opened the menu.
Also, to anyone trying to portablize this, or to anyone using it portably, be aware that it can mess with the USN status of the drives, creating the USN journal for any drive that you want to index, and deleting the journal on any drive that you disable indexing on. That shouldn't be a big issue on workstations (except that creating the file could be seen as impolite), but could be an problem on servers, where it is used by FRS, DFS, and AD in the windows world.
Thank you for trying it out and confirming the speed.
The journal issue is interesting and certainly another concern about the program.
neutron1132 (at) usa (dot) com
Just to clarify, Everything doesn't have the delay on every use, it shrinks to the tray and is instant from there on. My computer suffers from IT lock-down, and I run Everything after startup. No delays after initial start.
I am not my signature.
That is assuming an installed local environment.
In a portable environment, it has to be closed until you plug in the drive and start up the process. In the case of the discussion here, of having it integrated, then that would be when you start the menu, which people already regularly request could be sped up.
You're quite correct that it stays running in the background, which is yet another issue for anyone making it portable, in that they have to have a clean and obvious way to actually kill it since it will lock the drive and prevent eject.
I forgot to say that I run it off an unlocked partition of my hard drive, not a USB. I run Appetizer from the same paratition and have Everything start with the multi-launch. It closes down fine with the computer.
Sorry for any confusion, and the delay in replying.
I am not my signature.
It's on the Test Releases page.
https://portableapps.com/node/21230
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I'm not a fan of adding functionality into the menu that is not directly related to the function of the menu itself. Since there's really no disadvantage to having apps like Everything remain separate apps, it would only bloat the menu to add it in.
And it allows people that don't want or need it to leave it off.
Plus, it takes long enough to release new versions of PAM!
KISS.
Personally, I'd rather not include even the Updater or the File Associator into PAM. The first would work just as well as a separate app, and the second could be set to start when you open the menu, so it would behave like an integrated app anyway.
Furthermore, if these are NOT separate apps, then it severely limits the ability to do timely updates the their functionality, b/c then it would require ANOTHER update of PAM.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.