# Hard Disk Search Engine

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-disk-search-engine/560336>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 11, 2010, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-disk-search-engine/560336 "2010-11-11T18:23:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\
**Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-disk-search-engine/560336/1 "2010-11-11T18:23:04Z")

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So windows has a way of searching your hard-disk for documents containing a certain term or phrase, either in the title or in the text (if it is a word document for instance. This function will return a list of documents that meet the criteria, which is nice enough. I am wondering, however, if there is a search engine that would do the same but return results like google does, ie with a little blurb from a page that actually contains (part of) the search string. So I am looking for a program that does not just tell me ‘randomdocument.doc contains the text [randomsearchstring]’, but actually returns the sentence or paragraph in which that term shows up.

Does anyone know of such a program (preferably downloadable for free!)?

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**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\
**Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-disk-search-engine/560336/2 "2010-11-11T21:16:45Z")

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You might choose something from the following: [Best Free Desktop Search Utility](http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-desktop-search-utility.htm); [Copernic](http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/home/index.html) is recommended and, looking at the screenshots, it seems it’ll do something similar to what you want.

I should note that I’m a linux user, so I have no experience with any of them and can’t make recommendations. I’d just use _grep_ with the _–context_ switch for this kind of thing. Maybe you should look into [cygwin](http://www.cygwin.com/)? (Just kidding…)

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**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\
**Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-disk-search-engine/560336/3 "2010-11-11T21:26:26Z")

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> [@Svejk\_1](#):
>
> I am wondering, however, if there is a search engine that would do the same but return results like google does, ie with a little blurb from a page that actually contains (part of) the search string.

[Google Desktop](http://desktop.google.com/)

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**Author:** ![Raza](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raza/32/213_2.png) [@Raza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raza)\
**Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-disk-search-engine/560336/4 "2010-11-11T21:34:40Z")

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I’ve used _Agent Ransack_ on Windows for a number of years, and it has always worked well for me.