Is Search Indexer hopelessly unscalable?

Dell Notebook with Windows 8 Pro

I have (only) 1.3 million html/jpg documents in a folder (and its sub-folders).  I am adding about 500 new documents daily.  So, 99.961% of the documents are unchanged.

Many times during the day, my hard disk is maxed out.  The culprit is Microsoft Windows Search Indexer.  I can barely work during these times.

In the old days, the Indexer has an option not to index when the PC is used.  I can't find this in Windows 8.

What is the best remedy for my situation?  Would Windows Server 2012 fare any better?

Thanks.

July 25th, 2013 1:28am

Hi,

Windows 8 also has Index Option available. You can also mofidy the settings and where you want to index.

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July 25th, 2013 11:31am

Don't store so many files in 1 single folder. After 300,000 files NTFS becomes slow:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781134.aspx

July 25th, 2013 3:39pm

Don't store so many files in 1 single folder. After 300,000 files NTFS becomes slow:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc78113

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July 25th, 2013 10:01pm

Hi,

Windows 8 also has Index Option available. You can also mofidy the settings and where you want to

July 25th, 2013 11:11pm

I've never stored so many data into 1 folder  so I have no experience what the issue are.
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July 26th, 2013 1:11am

Hi,

You can choose to stop the Index Service.

July 26th, 2013 5:43am

You can choose to stop the Index Service.

In fact, just stopping it is not enough.  You also need to disable it to stop it from being automatically restarted.  Another option may be adding RAM to the machine. 

The real problem seems to be that the indexer can't prevent itself from causing thrashing when there is not enough memory for it to keep running.  That's why it would be necessary to both disable and stop it.  Another potential option, changing its execution priority, is not available either and thus another reason for having to take these manual measures.

 

FYI

Robert Aldwinckle
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July 26th, 2013 6:38pm

Stopping shouldn't be an option.  It is not the solution to the problem at hand.

I have plenty of memory, 8GB.  There's always at least 1GB unused at any one time.

July 27th, 2013 9:55am

The Windows Search Service does not scale very well. It sounds like you need an enterprise level product. Microsoft has a Search Server product line. There's an free express edition whose capacity is ~300k when backed by SQL Server 2008 Express and 10m when backed by with SQL Server, but the search server requires a server version of Windows. You can run the server OS in a virtual machine on your Windows 8 see if you can slow down the indexing by throttling the virtual machine's CPU.

You can also reduce the amount of files being indexed. Windows Search uses IFilters to index files. Try do a random search and see if you have unwanted file types in the result, then exclude the file extension from indexing.

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July 30th, 2013 5:37pm

, thanks for the info.

License-wise, I can install Windows Server 2012 on my notebook.  But is the Search Server smart enough to not hog the computer unnecessarily?  I don't have much changes to index.  It is just that the base volume is a bit large.  During the course of a day, there is sufficient time windows when the PC is not used to complete the indexing for the day.

My notebook is my main workhorse for everything.

Perhaps I should move the discussion to the Search Server forum, if there is one.

July 30th, 2013 9:28pm

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