3 software to find files and data fastest on Windows

A free file search engine, as its name implies, is free software that searches your computer for files. These free file finders are powerful programs, with more built-in search functions than your computer currently has.

If you have files scattered all over the place, on multiple hard drives, then using a free file finder is a must.

Wise JetSearch is a free file search utility that can find files on any attached drive in Windows. It can search for files on NTFS or FAT drives and supports wildcard search terms for more flexibility. All connected drives can be searched at once, including external hard drives.

Quick search (Quick Search) is a small hidden bar located at the top of the screen. You can search from anywhere by hovering your mouse over it to bring up the search box. Results open in full program.

Everything is another free file search tool for Windows with a super neat program interface and lots of great features.

You can use Everything to search from the Windows right-click context menu and find files on multiple NTFS drives at the same time, both internal and external.

When you start searching for files, the results are displayed immediately – no need to wait or press Enter. Newly modified or added files are included in Everything in real time, so there is no need to manually re-index the database. According to the website Everything, it takes a second to index about a million files.

There’s a toggle button in the Everything settings that you can use to exclude any custom, system, or hidden files and folders from the results to narrow down what you’re looking for.

Everything also includes an HTTP and FTP server so you can access files from networked computers that also have the program installed.

Everything is even free for commercial use, includes the option to download a portable version and lets you save searches as bookmarks for easy recall.

There are many programs out there that can search for files, but not all of them are created to find duplicate files. The program from Auslogics, called Duplicate File Finder, will help you do just that.

It’s easy for a hard drive to overburden with videos and music because these types of files take up a lot of space. Accidentally downloading an existing track is also very likely, and if you suspect you’ve done it or have old backups you no longer need, the duplicate file finder can delete these duplicates.

This file finder can find duplicates of all file types, or you can just select images, audio files, videos, archive files and / or application files.

After you choose the file type to search for, the search criteria page allows you to specify a number of settings to make the search truly customized. You can skip files smaller and / or larger than a certain size, ignore file names and dates, ignore hidden files, and search for files with certain words in the name. All these settings are optional.

You can also specify what happens to the copies you delete: Put them in the Recycle Bin, store them in Rescue Center integration (in case you want to reuse them later) or delete them permanently.

When it’s time to delete files, you can sort the copies by name, path, size, and date modified. The program automatically selects one of the copies so deletion only requires a few buttons.

Be sure to deny any third-party software offers during the installation if you only want the search engine to find files.

Quick Search is a free search utility provided by the software company Glarysoft.

Files are indexed quickly with Quick Search and can be searched through instant search, so you don’t even need to press a key. Enter to see them.

When you open Quick Search, a minimized version of the full program is displayed at the bottom of the screen. When you search for files from this search area, the results are displayed in a small pop-up screen for quick access. You can press the key Ctrl to show or hide the search bar.

Alternatively, open the entire program to choose a filter option and show only the shortcuts, folders, documents, photos, videos or music from the results page.

Quick Search indexes files and folders from all attached drives, meaning you can go through all drives to see what you’re looking for.

5. SearchMyFiles

Download link:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/search_my_files.html#DownloadLinks

Despite its small 100KB file size, SearchMyFiles is a portable file search utility for Windows that has a ton of detailed features.

Regular searches are certainly supported, but SearchMyFiles also includes a duplicate file finder to make it easy to remove redundant files.

Here are some search functions you can modify when searching for files with SearchMyFiles: Exclude directories, use wildcards to find subdirectories and files, exclude files by extension, exclude files if they do not contain a certain text, search for files larger and / or smaller than a specified size, including / exclude files identified as read-only, hidden, compressed, encrypted, and saved archives, as well as searching by date created / modified / accessed.

SearchMyFiles can also save the criteria of any search so you can easily reopen it in the future, export the search results to an HTML file, and integrate itself into the Windows right-click context menu.

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