SearchMyFiles 3.31

Overview

Tired of Windows’ search function taking a significant amount of time just to display inaccurate results in a search? SearchMyFiles is a small app that gives you an alternative way of searching files in your computer. It includes many useful options and filters, such as search using wildcards, search by date last modified/created/last accessed, by attributes, by file size, etc. but also search using special filters that Windows search doesn’t offer; for example you can search for files created within a certain amount of time with sizes ranging between an upper and lower bound that you define.

Installation

The program is portable, thus no installation is required. That’s a pretty big advantage since you can carry it with you in a USB flash disk and use it at any given moment, without wasting time installing it (installation might not even be applicable on the computer you’re using). So all you have to do is download the ZIP archive, extract it and run the executable. Inside the archive there’s also a readme file and a Help file included. The program is completely clean from any sort of malware.

Supported operating systems are all versions of Windows from 2000 up to 7.

Interface

When you run the program, you’ll be presented with the “Search Options” window where you’ll see all the available search options and filters. At the upper part of the window you can see options regarding search mode (standard, duplicate, non-duplicate and summary), search folders, wildcards, and file contents. Moving lower are filters regarding file size, attributes and file time (created/modified/last accessed). One last option is at the bottom of the window in which you can tell the program to stop after finding a specific number of files.

After starting the search the results will be displayed on the other window of the program, which is inactive until a search is initiated.

Pros

SearchMyFiles has a lot of interesting filters that you can use for your search. Starting out from the basic ones, such as selecting the desired search folders and excluding the ones you don’t want to be searched, adding wildcards, excluding files with particular extensions and choosing between text and binary search, to more advanced filters like file size range, attributes and file time created/modified/last accessed. You can also select the subfolder depth; meaning that the subfolders after the specified depth won’t be scanned.

This software can be used as a duplicate file finder as well. To switch to this function, simply change search mode from the “Search Options” window to “Duplicate Search”.

Cons

All of the options are in the same window, without much space between them. That makes it a bit confusing to inexperienced users.

Alternatives

Agent Ransack is a freeware that gives you the ability to find files on your hard drive with less effort than you would need if you were to use Windows’ search. Other alternatives are Locate32 (free), FileSeek (free) and XSearch (free).

Conclusion

Wonderful program with useful features, especially for those who want to make more advanced searches on hard drives with tons of files and folders.