VX Search Review – Meticulous File Finder Lives Up to Expectations

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Advanced file finder
  • (8 more, see all...)

Sadly, highly customizable options for delivering refined file search results are not amongst Windows' strongest features. These configurable settings tremendously aid users to rapidly locate files that meet a particular set of rules, in order to identify and remove duplicates or large files to make room for important data, for instance.

In these cases, users may shift their attention to products specially developed for this meticulous task. During our software expeditions we came across VX Search, a small-sized and free utility that shows great potential for meeting users' requirements toward fast and accurate file search operations. It supports multiple profiles, reports, and charts, in addition to numerous filters.

The program is unwrapped quickly and with minimal user intervention. Its interface is represented by a normal window with a clear-cut structure, comprised of several panes, a toolbar, and a menu bar. Plus, the tool integrates an entry into the Windows Explorer right-click menu for drives and directories for conducting searches on the spot.

Create multiple search profiles for repetitive tasks

New search profiles can be put together by indicating a name, filters, and target locations. They come in handy for frequently performing file searches with the same settings, so that users don't have to go through the trouble of adjusting the details each time.

Profiles can be deleted, duplicated, edited, exported, and imported, re-arranged in the list, and sent to the desktop as shortcuts for quick access. Users should keep in mind that the free edition of VX Search allows only up to three search profiles to exist in the list.

The app is capable of scanning all computer hard disks (including removable drives and optical discs), directory or network shares, servers or NAS devices, or all servers in the network. When it comes to filters, there are a lot of options available.

Thoroughly customize search filters

Users can take into account the file name, extension, full path, category (e.g. archive, backups and disk images, video games, music and audio, or programs, extensions and scripts), file size or attributes, PC user name, date, HEX pattern, JPEG EXIF information, or nested rules. It is possible to add as many criteria as necessary in order to speed up the search operation and narrow down results.

Run in-depth file searches by setting numerous filters
Run in-depth file searches by setting numerous filters

As far as the amount of detail that can be put into each filter is concerned, for example when it comes to file names, users can indicate a matching or excluding suffix, prefix, or content, together with a wild card, regular expression, exact or excluding match.

Further tweak search settings

Search profiles are not only made of filters and target locations, but also of folder exclusions and commands to automatically execute when a user-defined number of search results has been reached. These can be either a notification to send (PDF or text) or report to save (HTML, CSV, XML, or text). Alternatively, users may define custom command lines. Multiple different actions can be assigned.

Other search options focus on the default report title, limit of results before stopping the operation, top level rules logic (match any or match all), user name processing (i.e. process and show files user names), along with performance: number of file and directory search threads, fault tolerant or high-performance mode for folder scans, as well as low, medium, or full-speed file search.

Investigate search results

After VX Search carries out the scan operation, users may examine general details concerning the number of results, total occupied disk space, total files and space, task duration, performance (number of files per second), along with errors (if any). For each file in the list, they can find out the name, full path, size, last date of modification.

The bottom part of the frame displays all files categorized by extension, together with their size and number of items for each format. However, this information can be replaced by switching to other categories: by file size, creation, modification, or last access time or date, file type, custom rules, or user name.

Copy/move files and configure advanced settings

The files can be open or their location can be revealed in Windows Explorer without leaving VX Search's interface, their names and details can be copied to the Clipboard, or they can be copied or moved somewhere else. For the last two operations, the program makes room for customization when it comes advanced file copy/move options.

To be more specific, users can set up the same rules as in the search profiles for copy/move tasks, such as categories, HEX pattern, EXIF tags, and creation date. Moreover, it is possible to select the course of action when encountering existing files (e.g. always overwrite, skip, add unique name suffix, and copy), maximum number of directory scan threads, performance mode, total copy streams, compression and verification mode, and so on.

View charts and generate reports

Pie or bar charts can be studied to get an accurate visual representation of the files, in accordance to the selected category. In the case of the extension group, users can find out the total number of files for each format in the search results list. Charts can be printed or copied to the Clipboard as images, but not before editing the chart header and footer (default footer shows current date, time, host, and title).

View and examine pie charts
View and examine pie charts

Meanwhile, the file scan results can be compiled into reports and saved to the disk. VX Search supports HTML, text, CSV, XML, and PDF format. Otherwise, they can be saved as FLR-formatted report files (compressed or uncompressed) or exported to an SQL database.

Other program options and settings

VX Search's configuration can be backed up to file and restored at a later time on another computer running the same application. It is possible to load a report file, pause an ongoing search and resume it later, toggle multiple UI layouts, enable or disable audio notifications for operations started, failed, and completed (with and without errors), as well as inspect a message console with logged messages and errors.

Furthermore, users can disable the Windows Explorer shell extension and automatic checkups for software updates, include system files and hidden network shares in the scan jobs, ask the tool to request administrative permissions for searches and to abort operations on critical errors, minimize VX Search to the system tray to become minimally invasive, reconfigure keyboard shortcut, as well as apply a proxy configuration for software updates.


The Good

VX Search worked smoothly on Windows 8.1 Pro during our evaluation, without hanging, crashing, or popping up error messages. It runs on older Windows editions too, including XP. Complete help documentation is available.

Scan operations are carried out rapidly while CPU and RAM consumption remains minimal. Nevertheless, if the hardware specifications are not favorable, users can temporarily pause scan jobs to allocate system resources to other applications.

It is possible to define multiple search profiles with different settings based on target locations, thorough filters and folder exclusions, similarly copy or move files by taking into account rules, as well as examine charts and generate reports to find out important information about files, like the ones taking up the most space on the disk.

This edition is free to use.

The Bad

This free edition of VX Search allows up to three search profiles and does not support SQL databases or email notifications, although the app does not inform users of this before actually attempting to use the features. These are available in VX Search Ultimate.

Otherwise, we didn’t observe any noteworthy downsides to the program.

The Truth

Taking into consideration the amount of details that can be indicated for file scan operations, advanced users should be thrilled with VX Search. It certainly lived up to our expectations.

user interface 4
features 5
ease of use 4
pricing / value 5


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 
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VX Search (22 Images)

Run in-depth file searches by setting numerous filtersSpecify conditions for each filterSelect a file class or class group to take into account for the category filterSelect file attributes to take into accountSet conditions for the last modification time
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