The size of our hard drives keeps increasing. All the while we just keep storing more and more data files. That means that
finding the correct file without spending hours that you can't afford to spend becomes a real problem!
So how do we find a letter, a document, a graphic file on our huge hard drives?
PC Data Finder 5.5 by Silver Lake Technologies is a very good way the solve this persistent problem! It works quite well
on Win 95/Win 98/ME/Win NT/Win 2K. It will likely work equally well on Win XP (or they will quickly make available a
new release).
We are used to having search engines search the Internet for data and/or files. Yet the "find" or "search" utilities built into
Explorer in Windows falls far short of a satisfactory way to look for that file you just know is on your hard drive. That's
because the file may be in a .pdf or stored in a .zip file that Explorer cannot access. PC Data Finder 5.5 does an excellent
job of looking into these specialized files as well as the typical .doc files to find the word or phrase you want to locate. It
is literally a search engine on your own PC!
PC Data Finder 5.5 can operate in either of two modes, "searching" an index of your data that you periodically refresh,
or in a straight "scanning" mode. A search is almost instantaneous because you have built the index ahead of time, but a
scan took almost an hour for my 25 GB of data. Needless to say, the smartest method is to index your data sometime
when you can let it crunch along for a good while. Then, to refresh your index every week or so. You can then reserve the
scan mode for that unusual time when it is really needed.
There is a lot of flexibility in entering the search pattern depending on exactly what you want it to find. You will just have to
play with this feature to get good at it. There are filters to invoke when appropriate and file types to include or exclude, so
you can customize your search/scan criteria just like a good search engine on the net.
PC Data Finder 5.5" comes on a CD with a good printed manual. Help is also available from the vendor. It is one of the
most valuable utilities you will ever buy for your PC, and the price is right. I recommend PC Data Finder 5.5 without
reservation.
$29.95