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Indexing External Drives

Hi everyone,

So, I recently decided to move all my photos (totaling 120GB) to my external terabyte hard drive. I moved them all, and linked the new 'Photos' folder into my pictures library, so it looks just how it all did before. The problem I'm having, however, is that now I've linked it in, and it's registered as an indexed location, every time I reboot my computer it seemingly wipes away the whole index and restarts it all! I could understand if I kept reconnecting the drive every time I start up my desktop, but it's one of those vertical units, and it is always turned on before my computer, so that even my BIOS recognizes it, and Windows has now permanently named it the E: drive. I did this for the specific reason so that the search would work, since Windows shouldn't even think that it's been unplugged. I even turn off the drive (which has it's own power source) after my desktop has completely shut down.

Now, re-indexing doesn't really put that much strain on my desktop, but the other niggle is that I store all of my Steam games on the external too (Note that Steam never thinks the games missing, since the drive letter or content never changes). This means that while my drive re-indexes for like 4 hours my external drive is buzzing away like crazy, making gaming or even photo editing extremely slow when using Lightroom.

I'm going to remove the pictures folder for now, but I often search my pictures when looking for a specific file, and this function is extremely useful for me...

Any suggestions, fixes, or workarounds? I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem, though it does take a while to notice it.

 

Hi Alex,

 

 

It would be great if you can provide me with this information for a better understanding.

 

1.       Did you add the external hard drive to the list of locations to be indexed from the Indexing Options?

2.       By mentioning “it's registered as an indexed location” do you mean that you have already done this?

 

If you haven’t added the external hard disk in the Indexing Options, then I would suggest you to follow these instructions and let’s know the result.

 

a)       Press “windows Logo” + “W” keys on the keyboard to display the “Settings” search bar.

b)       Type “Indexing Options” in that search box and press “Enter” key on the keyboard.

c)       In the “Indexing Options” window, click on “Modify” button.

d)       Under “Change selected locations”, select the external hard disk and add it to the indexing location list.

e)       If you are unable to find the hard disk drive in that list, then click on “Show all locations” and check if the hard disk is shown up there.

f)        Click on “Ok” and then click on “Close”.

 

You may refer to this article for more information regarding Indexing and Search:

 

Indexing and Search: Frequently asked questions

 

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-IN/windows-8/search-index-faq

 

You may now check if the issue still happens or not. If the issue persists, you may get back to us with more information about the issue.

 

Regards,
Rajesh Govind - Microsoft Support Engineer

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Thank you for the quick reply!

To answer your query, yes, the drive has been added to the list of locations in the Indexing options, and my 'pictures' folder is selected for indexing.

I tried indexing the entire drive at one stage, but the issue still persisted...
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Hi Alex,



It would be great if you can provide me with this information for a better understanding.


1.       Did you add the external hard drive to the list of locations to be indexed from the Indexing Options?

2.       By mentioning “it's registered as an indexed location” do you mean that you have already done this?


If you haven’t added the external hard disk in the Indexing Options, then I would suggest you to follow these instructions and let’s know the result.


a)       Press “windows Logo” + “W” keys on the keyboard to display the “Settings” search bar.

b)       Type “Indexing Options” in that search box and press “Enter” key on the keyboard.

c)       In the “Indexing Options” window, click on “Modify” button.

d)       Under “Change selected locations”, select the external hard disk and add it to the indexing location list.

e)       If you are unable to find the hard disk drive in that list, then click on “Show all locations” and check if the hard disk is shown up there.

f)        Click on “Ok” and then click on “Close”.


You may refer to this article for more information regarding Indexing and Search:


Indexing and Search: Frequently asked questions


http://windows.microsoft.com/en-IN/windows-8/search-index-faq


You may now check if the issue still happens or not. If the issue persists, you may get back to us with more information about the issue.


I seem to have the same problem. I have several external drives, two of which are mounted simultaneously. One of them is in the list; the other does not appear even after I select *show all locations*. I use this external mount device for two alternative drives. The first showed up and was indexed. The second does not. I have not yet checked to see if the first will appear again if I plug it in. The two drives have different names and different assigned drive letters (X and Y).

The reason I have tried to add them to the index is that when I have mounted them while the computer is running Windows takes about 20-30 minutes to list their contents in Explorer or to fully load disk management and release it for use. I am hoping that the issue will not continue once they are included in the index.

The FAQs and nonexistent Help articles on related subjects are incredibly frustrating. If I search on index external drive I get 60 entries, but 58 or so are not even remotely relevant to indexing OR external drives. This thread was certainly right on the target, and I thought, after the first drive responded as hoped, that the problem might not be intractable. But there is no further step after show all fails to show all. Windows is becoming more and more like the execrable fascist Mac OS.

Why my other (always attached) external drive (designated as H) seems to work more smoothly with the system I do not know. Both this drive (a WD Passport) and the other two (both Hitachi 3.5" internals mounted alternately in a single docking station) are connected via USB3 ports.

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Last updated April 21, 2025 Views 15,465 Applies to: