Copernic desktop search problems

[kellon22]

After six months use Copernic desktop search started generating “Catastrophic failure” messages and it will not search anything. The index status says there are ~50,700 indexed docs and 4.4 million keywords. I am running XP and the drive status is:

38.3 MB used
33.9 MB free 47%
72.2 MB capacity

Someone told me they had similar problems and had to re-build the index. OK, but does anyone know what is going wrong here?

[AussieWebmaster]

This one needs someone who knows the system.... hope someone does... have you tried their tech support?

[kellon22]

This one needs someone who knows the system.... hope someone does... have you tried their tech support?

Hello, and thank you for your post. I did not find anything relevant in the documentation. I wrote to Copernic support six months ago, when the program would not finish a complete index. They invite interaction but do not respond. Also, it is very strange that there is no forum for the product.

[AussieWebmaster]

Have you tried Google Desktop?

[kellon22]

Have you tried Google Desktop?

I am copying my response to that question on the other thread about forums for desktop search:

"No, I have not. My reasons are that X1 and Copernic were supposed to be highly regarded (X1 moreso), and it seems that my personal desktop search should be done on my desktop and not on a web server. Further to this second point, six months ago I was reading that Google assumed it was normal and reasonable to redo the entire index when prompted, but they don't have a way to index during idle time. That way, working on your computer changes the file landscape to be progressively out of synch, and Google wants to waste time re-indexing old files that do not need it. ???"

Shouldn't functionality and security/privacy be better by keeping it local? Maybe the Google app has improved. ?

[kellon22]

I'll play devil's advocate on the issue of web vs desktop based applications for desktop search:

A hard drive is a limited resource, and one tends to accumulate files until they are full. Meanwhile, an index file accumulates a large copy of all the files on the drive.

A resident desktop search engine will probably necessitate early planning for storage filling up and expansion of storage capacity earlier than without the desktop search. Is that what I am up against? 53-55% full seems too early for that problem.

I quoted the # of indexed files and keywords above, but I have no idea if this is approaching a limit or how it compares to common situations. I have another program that has some rudimentary search capacity as a secondary function. It was slowing my system to a crawl until the program developer had me trim down the index. I told him that I was indexing *.* prior to that, but we exchanged several messages before he noted that 50k files was too many and I needed to constrain to 5k or less. I would expect a more serious desktop search engine to index many more files.

What are the index limitations of common desktop search engines?
Why wouldn't a search engine analyze the drive and index periodically and report the need for storage management instead of chugging along until it breaks?

[kellon22]

I located the index files:

Filename size (Kb)
ChunkFD.dat 3
ChunkI.dat0
ChunkSCLF.dat 51,200
ChunkSCSF.dat 1
ChunkV.dat 1
DocumentsDI.dat 49
DocumentsFD.dat 348,160
DocumentsI.dat 1
DocumentsID.dat 12,288
DocumentsSD.dat 16,384
KeywordsDBT.dat 9,472
KeywordsDL.dat 2,048
KeywordsI.dat 0
KeywordsIBT.dat 2,752
KeywordsP.dat 882,688
KeywordsSBT.dat 541,632


An 800 Mb file seems huge to me. Is that way Copernic stopped working? I will have to try re-indexing unless someone here can suggest doing something else first.

Maybe the constant index updating creates data that can not be compressed. So, at some point, you overwrite the index and start anew. ??

[kellon22]

Re-starting the index did not work. It is failing with email (I use Eudora). I moved some email around to trim some large email boxes (files) and "compacted the mailboxes". Still, Copernic is failing.

Uninstall, re-install, and try again?

Can anyone help?

[Somethingelse]

Has anyone fixed this problem?

[kellon22]

I had to unload and reload a fresh copy of Copernic. I also deleted my index and started over. I think I tried the new program load with the index file to verify that I had to rebuild the it (don't remember offhand). The program is not working well, but it has not yet failed to work at all.

A relative who loved the previous version said "the new Copernic is just about useless". I still use it, but I wish someone would fix it or make the previous version available. Why would they break a good program and then abandon it?

[Somethingelse]

Hi, Ive reinstalled it, and rebuilt the index now.

i get some random unspecified errors about 5hrs in to indexing, then constant unspecified errors after about 44hrs in to indexing. (it was doing its first full index for over 48hrs before it crashed)

i have about 1,103,942 files that need indexing, when it gets to that number it seems to repeat over and over
the index is over 6gb

I'm just about to remove most file types from the "file types to index" option, just leaving .txt, .avi, ,mp4, mpg2
to see if that helps, but that leaves all the rest lost.

[Somethingelse]

Forgot to say, was set to index My Docs on c:, and the storage drives E: F: G: H:
so no system files or logs were indexed.

I'm having to use Locate32 on my other PC, its very fast, takes a minute to index what copernic takes 48hrs to do, but GUI isn't that good for video and pic files :(

http://locate32.net/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

[kellon22]

Thank you for the reminder. I need to take a closer look at locate32. Will it handle Eudora email? (Eudora 7.1.0.9) X1 would not; otherwise, I would have used it instead of Copernic.

[kellon22]

It is almost 3 months later now. I still haven't tried locate32, but Copernic just went blank (won't search anything; reports "no matching docs"). This follows a version update a couple months ago. Google software in general has great functionality, but they log all your internet searches (unless blocked), and I still don't think that is appropriate, especially since it is my hard drive. If anyone here can diagnose Copernic problems or suggest a fix, it would be greatly appreciated.