Why is MSN Desktop Search so slow at indexing my disk? And other tips...
A quick follow-up to four points, since "Dogfooding MSN Desktop Search" seems to be getting a lot of attention.
First, Joe Wilcox of Jupiter Research is disappointed with the initial indexing speed of desktop search, because it took 2.5 hours to index 7GB of data and 800MB of email on his laptop. I’m not sure if that’s considered fast, slow, or in-between, but I do know one way to speed it up — defragment your hard disk first! This applies to all the desktop search utilities out there: MSN, Google, Yahoo, X1, Copernicus, the lot. Their indexers have to crack open every file to look inside it. If that file is in nice consecutive blocks on your disk, it’ll be slurped up in a flash, but if the blocks are scattered hither and yon, your disk head isn’t going to thank you.
Second, the indexer is very cautious, and will immediately back off if it thinks either your or another application is using the machine. So the fastest way to build an index is:
- Defragment your hard disk
- Start up just Outlook or Outlook Express (so that it can index your mailbox)
- Install MSN Desktop Search
- Leave it alone!
- If you can’t leave it alone, right-click on the magnifying-glass icon in your system tray and select “Index Now”
Third, the two videos of the MSN Desktop Search team on Channel 9 are long, but if you want to get any idea of the history or future direction of the tool, they’re well worth checking out. The Silicon Valley team show off all the capabilities of the desktop bar, while the Redmond team talk about the big picture and shipping product. Scary tidbit: some of the core code is apparently left over from Cairo, way back in 1991!
Finally, I’d previously suggested leaving feedback on the msnsearch blog, but there’s an even easier way from within desktop search itself — right-clicking on the MSN butterfly button and selecting Help->Send Feedback will take you to the MSN Toolbar feedback page. Of course, then you don’t get to read the cool blog comments, like the team fixing customer problems, or readers reverse-engineering the registry hacks shown on the video!
Oh, and Scoble, do we have a record yet for the greatest number of items indexed? I just saw an email from one internal user who’s got 1.2 million…