ACFAT - the quickest way to find a file (drive indexing)

Overview

ACFAT allows to search for a file or directory, within seconds or even milliseconds. This is thanks to indexing a certain drive. This index is saved to "_acfat.acf2" file in the root directory of a drive which is chosen to be ACFAT ready (indexed).

Updating can be done automatically (only on XP and NT systems) or by hand. For all of this is responsible a separate application named AcEyes.exe. If you activate an ACFAT on some disk, this application puts itself to autostart (in registry). AcEyes and Ac Browser Plus cooperate each other.

Activating

Open Ac Browse Plus, go to Commands\ACFAT\Settings menu command. From the drive list choose a drive you want to activate (that is you want to be ACFAT-ready). Set "Activate ACFAT on this disk", and then, if you want it to be automatically updated, choose "Automatically update this ACFAT" (this works on XP and NT systems only)..

Then press Rebuild button. If ACFAT file is not present on the selected drive it will be created and built. Using the Rebuild button is also important when you didn't select automatic update, then you have to rebuild the ACFAT information from time to time by yourself, using this button.

When finished, ACFAT on this selected drive is active and ready to use.

Notes:
The more drives you will activate, the more RAM will be used, to find out how much memory is used by the ACFAT service (AcEyes.exe), open task manager, and check it out.

Using

There are many ways you can use AcEyes. In Ac Browser Plus press:

Ctrl+Alt+K, to start searching from the current directory. Also you may go to Commands\ACFAT\Search. This will open the AcEyes application.
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+K to start searching from the root.
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J, you will see a well known Ac Quick Search tool, but this time this tool will ask AcEyes to bring the current folder's information, which is much quicker.
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Space to calculate currently selected folder's size.
Or, finally, click the "Counting directories' sizes mode" button on the ACB's toolbar, keeping Ctrl+Shift+Alt pressed to enter this mode with ACFAT used.

You can also open AcEyes by yourself, click those eyes on taskbar (near to the clock), go to the "Search" tab and define the directories, you want to search in, separating them with semicolons(;) - like: "C:\Windows;D:\music"

    Use the "Search for" edit box to find a file, the rules are the same as in the File Finder, that is: you can use regular expression, and you can separate particular queries with a semicolon - ";". Examples:
       "ac browser" - all the directories and files consisting of this expression will be found
        "*.jpg" - all jpg files will be found
        "*.txt;*.doc" - all txt and doc files will be found.
        "*.*" - all files and directories will be found.

Press "Find" button, press Alt+F, or press Enter.

Now, double click an entry in the result list, AC Browser will locate the file and set focus on it.

Remarks

Press Escape to put the program to the tray.

In Search Tab, you can choose one of the predefined directories. Click "Choose" button to do so, note, that when you select a directory with Ctrl down. then this directory will be added to the list of directories to search in.

Technical notes

AcEyes will use RAM and some CPU resources, please look at the task manager to find out more information.