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Hi. Until last week, I had Windows 7 and a BIOS based system. I now have Windows 10 and a UEFI based system. All hardware is the same, though: an SSD for the OS and two HDDs for storage – a 4TB (E drive) and a 1TB (F drive). The 4TB is GPT and the 1TB is MBR.

The problem I have since moving to Windows 10 is that I cannot add the E drive to Indexing Options for search purposes. When I click Modify/Show all locations, the E drive is nowhere to be seen. I've checked the following:
The E drive is ticked for 'Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed...'
The E drive Owner and Permissions is the same as the F drive.
The hidden folder 'System Volume Information' on both drives is empty.
In the Registry, "Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search" shows that WSearch has the 'Allow' box ticked for both 'Full Control' and 'Read'.
The 4TB HDD is working fine – I spent 12 hours running “chkdsk E: /f /r /x” on it.

Can anyone suggest cause and cure for this problem? If so, you have my sincere thanks.

I have seem similar problems before, but the fix is problematic. Check and see if the drive is in Basic or Dynamic modes in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc).

It's possible that the Search subsystem is expecting the disk to be either Dynamic or "GPT", when it currently isn't. Before you do that, though, I'd recommend reading up on the various modes, as conversion is irreversible and some programs will be affected.

EDIT: You might want to get a program that can read SMART settings to make sure nothing else is wrong with the disk.

Hi Vhalidictes and thanks for that. All my drives are, according to Disk Management, Simple / Basic / NTFS. A program called CrystalDiskInfo rates all three as Health Status: Good.

Are you suggesting I might convert the E drive from Basic to Dynamic just in case the Search subsystem is expecting it to be Dynamic? If so, is there not a way to change the behaviour of the Search subsystem rather than the disk?

The only other answers I was able to find on this was to either
1) Rebuild the index (from the Advanced settings button, middle option in new window)
2) Back up the data to another location, delete and re-create the partition in Disk Administrator, restore the data.

It's also possible that you could change the drive letter that Windows uses and reboot? I've not needed to do that, but it's less involved than reformatting. It's likely that this is a one-off problem where your second drive isn't populated in whichever registry entry Search uses, but that's really a last resort.

Thanks for spending time on this for me, it's appreciated. I forgot to mention in the original post that I'd tried a rebuild of the index. The change of drive letter sounded a good idea but it didn't work, unfortunately. I'll see how I get on without Indexing (shouldn't be too much of a loss) before I consider moving all the data off the disk.

Thanks again.

I always disable indexing anyway (got into the habit on Windows, and I continue to do so now on Linux). Chews up resources, can get confused (and in certain situations will try to index things it shouldn't like network shares), and IMO those rare occasions where it might be useful generally don't outweigh the hassles.

I know what you mean and that's why I'm not TOO bothered about my problem. Sometimes, though, it's a pain to have to wait so long when you need to find that needle...

just brew it! wrote:

I always disable indexing anyway (got into the habit on Windows, and I continue to do so now on Linux). Chews up resources, can get confused (and in certain situations will try to index things it shouldn't like network shares), and IMO those rare occasions where it might be useful generally don't outweigh the hassles.

I totally agree.
I switched a long time ago to Agent Ransackfor all my searches. it works great for me.

However, in case you didn't use any google-fu, I found these.

https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/how-to-sol ... x-rebuild/

https://www.onmsft.com/news/how-rebuild ... windows-10

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 22e784a736


https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 5b9c99a20e


This is the most interesting thing I found.
There is something called the Windows 10 Install Integrity Checklist

That was said to be something to check if your install/upgrade does not seem perfect.

Hi Dposcorp. Yes, that's a good list of fault finders. No use to me, though – I've done a clean-install and still can't index the E drive.

With those other search programs, is it as easy as Windows i.e. is there a search box constantly onscreen or do you have to fire up the search program first?

From what I remember it's not context sensitive, but in general I can second the recommendation of Agent Ransack. Especially if you need to search within files. That was what sent me looking for it a while ago. I was missing the ability to grep things.

dortmunder wrote:

With those other search programs, is it as easy as Windows i.e. is there a search box constantly onscreen or do you have to fire up the search program first?

One step back is to pin the search app on Start/Taskbar.

Redocbew wrote:

I was missing the ability to grep things.

Increase your geek creds with cygwin+grep or findstr.