I've used Google Desktop Search, Copernic, Yahoo Desktop Search, and Microsoft's Windows Search. What do all these programs have in common? They are all resource hogs that can slow down your system. After I got tired of the constant noise coming from my hard drive being accessed relentlessly, I just gave up on all of them. These programs build huge databases of all the files on your hard drive including the contents, for the purpose of allowing you to quickly find the files you are looking for based on keywords that appear in the files. Admittedly, they do a good job of searching and the results come up quickly if not instantaneously. But that is to be expected. After all, that's what an indexed database of every word in every file is supposed to do. Unfortunately, with all these products, the cost is a big chunk of hard drive space, coupled with what seems like constant disk access.
Luckily, I've found a good solution called Locate32. I realized after a while that I really don't need to search for keywords inside my documents all that often. I keep all my Microsoft Word documents pretty much in one folder, and most of my other text files, Excel files, programming code, etc... are all basically organized in a central location. I don't feel the need to index every single byte of my entire 500 gig hard drive. Locate32 is a useful utility that indexes all the filenames on your hard drive, without reading the content. For me this is a much better solution. I search for files all the time. Whether it be because I've copied the pictures from my digital camera to different folders, or I'm looking for a specific executable, or I'm looking for mp3s that I've ripped multiple times, this utility comes in quite handy. You can easily find duplicate files instantly. The searches are quick and the program uses a minimal resources. Unlike the aforementioned search applications, you can turn off Locate32 at any time just by exiting the program. I guess you can compare Locate32 to the built-in Windows File Finder, but in my mind there's no comparison. Locate32 is much faster. It doesn't grind away at your hard drive like Windows File Finder does, every time you do a search. The results just show up instantly. As for indexing, you can set the schedule and drives that you want included or excluded in the index. You can even have it index network drives and search those network drives even when you are offline. Of course, you can only get the file information, like size and location, etc... You won't have access to the file until you connect back to the network. But it's still a handy feature.
Locate32 uses very minimal system resources. I keep it sitting in my system tray and it uses about 1 megabyte of memory when lying dormant. That's incredibly low especially when compared to the full blown desktop search applications. Also, my database is between 20 and 30 megabytes. Compare that to the multiple gigabytes it takes for the big desktop search apps. So, give it a try. You might find yourself using it a lot more than you think. Even if you use it once in a while, it hardly uses any memory or disk space and doesn't negatively impact your system in any way. In my opinion, it's handy tool to have around.
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