Tigersoft FileSpider

The Windows search tool isn’t always capable of properly detecting the files you’re looking for, or it can take a little too much, especially if the index is not completely built. However, if you know there’s a large collection you’re sure doesn’t get modified, then Tigersoft FileSpider can quickly index it and find anything in the blink of an eye.

Thanks to a clever development process, the application skips you the time and effort of going through a setup process, letting you take advantage of its features from the moment download is done. What’s more, portability means that system registries remain intact, thus not affecting the PC you use it on.

By default, you’re facing a large, empty database, which you need to fill with all locations you want to index. Since drag and drop is not supported, the only way to start doing this is through the add function, which brings up a new window with several detail fields besides source folder, such as name, comment, and tags.

Be sure to close the volume creation screen when done, because you can end up waiting a lot of time, since there’s no prompt to tell you import is done, and the window doesn’t automatically disappear either. However, adding a rich source can take some time, and you may see the progress slider quickly filling in before it turns gray again.

Once you associate directories with new volumes, they’re all shown in a tree list in the previously empty main window. You’re free to expand them, with a cool animation getting triggered for this action. There’s a built-in search engine to quickly locate items of interest in your volumes.

Unfortunately, the application scans the location and indexes it with files and folders identified in the first run. This means that removing, changing, or adding something new to the actual source doesn’t have an effect on your volumes, and there’s no option to refresh your databases to keep them updated.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that Tigersoft FileSpider comes with good intentions, and wants to help you easily catalog files and folders on your computer to find them in the nick of time. However, with no refresh of the database, you need to make sure that the source suffers no changes whatsoever.