Journals and Indexes Sizes and Outcomes

[Coldblackice]

Would it be possible to explain generally about sizing of index/journals, i.e. the outcomes/effects/pros/cons from such?

In particular, I'm referencing these settings:

Everything Search Index Journal Explanation - Forum thread 2POST.png (70.69 KiB) Viewed 1594 times

I'm wondering generally what is the effect of increasing the sizes of each of them? Or decreasing sizes? What would gain better performance, or the "pros" of increased size? What would be the cons?

In what situation might you want to increase the size of a particular one, for those that have the available hardware resources available (lots of RAM and disk space/speed)?

Lastly, as a minor suggestion, I personally think it'd be great adding this general info to the popup tooltips themselves, for users like me that aren't knowledgeable on the workings/outcomes of settings like these. Also, adding the "Default size: XXXX" would be useful to, for users to know what to set it back to if an experiment needs reverting.

TIA!

[void]

Everything Index Journal Max Size

The Everything Index Journal is an audit of all changes to your Everything index.
The Everything Index Journal is stored in memory.

Roughly 5000 changes will fit in 1 MB.
The default is 1MB.
I left the default small to reduce the memory footprint of Everything.

Unfortunately, on Windows 10+ the journal is filled very quickly.
Consider increasing the maximum size to at least 32768 KB if you have plenty of RAM and find the journal useful.



I recommend a maximum size 32768 KB if you host an Everything Server.
Everything server clients can use the index journal to update their indexes.
A larger journal size will reduce the change that a client needs to perform a full reindex.

Enabling the index journal with a maximum size of < 32768 KB will have no noticeable effect on performance.
Everything will save the index journal to disk when you exit Everything.
An index journal larger than 32768 KB may take a few seconds to write to disk on exit.
An index journal larger than 32768 KB may take a few seconds to read from disk on startup.



USN Journal Max Size

The USN Journal is a log of all changes on your NTFS volume.
The USN Journal is maintained by your NTFS driver. (not Everything)
The USN Journal is stored on disk.

Everything uses the USN Journal to monitor changes to NTFS volumes.

The default maximum size is: 32768 KB
The default allocation delta is: 1024 KB - 8192 KB



I recommend using a maximum size of: 131072 KB (128 MB)
This can help prevent the USN Journal from being filled on Windows 10+.
A full USN Journal will cause Everything to perform a reindex.

The allocation delta is how much data is deleted from the USN Journal when it is full.
I recommend leaving this unchanged (8192 KB)



Recent changes database

The recent changes database is irrelevant in Everything 1.4 and later as Date Modified is indexed.
It was useful in Everything 1.3 for tracking changes to your volumes because there was no date modified indexing.

The recent changes database is a copy of the USN Journal stored in memory.
There is a Date Recently Changed property to display and search this information.

Normally, Everything will only track recent changes since Everything was started.
The Load USN Journal into the recent changes database lets you view all recent changes in Everything that occurred before Everything was started.

I recommend leaving recent changes disabled and leaving the "Load USN Journal into the recent changes database" option unchecked.

Recent Changes