is windows indexing OK?

[John Rofrano]

[Gilles Gagnon] “A while back I read that Windows file indexing would cause issues with Vegas. I’ve turned it off but if it’s not true, I’ll turn it back on.”

Windows indexing itself doesn’t cause issues. What may cause an issue is that Windows may decide to start indexing when you need to perform some critical operating and cause hard drive contention. There is no reason to allow Windows to waste time indexing files. It doesn’t really benefit you unless you are constantly using the Windows search box to look for files.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Gilles Gagnon]

Makes a lot of sense.
Thanks JR.

I’ll keep it turned off. The idea arose as I’ve been doing searches in the last couple of days. But the sleuthing is over… so I’ll keep indexing off.
Cheers,

Gilles

[John Rofrano]

If you’re doing a lot of searches you might want to turn it on, let it index and when you’re done searching turn it off again. It use to be more of a problem when you were performing “real-time” processing like capturing a DV/HDV tape, but with tapeless workflows no one does that much any more.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Gilles Gagnon]

thanks

Gilles

[Nigel O’neill]

Indexing serves no purpose other than searching on a Windows PC. Besides disabling indexing, I set my visual performance options to adjust for best performance, which disables a lot of Windows ‘eye candy’ such as shadows under menus, fade animations i.e. anything that can steal CPU cycles away from editing. I also set my swap file size manually to minimize page file fragmentation, disable my screen saver and use RAID to improve read/write performance. If your machine is not going to be continuously connected to the Internet, then disabling antivirus software will boost performance during edits and renders, but you have to be very careful that you don’t infect your computer when downloading Windows updates after forgetting to reenable the AV software.

[Gilles Gagnon]

Very good points Nigel.

I do question the anti-virus though. Unless you’re accessing files to be scanned by the AV or the AV is scheduled to do a scan or update, I’m not sure how it will get in the way.

Gilles