Windows 10: Windows Search REFUSES to index anything on a particular hard drive

Hello,

I'm an advanced user, and I recently clean-installed Windows 10 after having some issues. I gave an expansion drive the letter A:, and after some investigation read that it was likely that assigning a drive letter A or B would preclude Windows from indexing anything on that drive (really, MS?).

So I reassigned it to D: and then G:, and Windows 10 still won't index ANYTHING on the drive. I've checked all permissions and properties to make sure they match those of other drives that Windows 10 successfully indexes. Especially, I made sure that the user "SYSTEM" had full control of the drive root and everything beneath. The only difference I see and cannot change is that the other drives are marked "ACTIVE" and presumably have a MBR from previous installations. My offending drive cannot be marked active, and I don't think this would affect indexing.

I've rebuilt the index, deleted the index, and rebooted, all many many times. I even copied a folder from the offending hard drive to another drive and Windows 10 spontaneously indexed the new files right away.

I'd rather not have to offload this large drive and reformat it.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or explanations?

:)

 

Cortana search IGNORES secondary hard drives!!

This appears to be a MAJOR limitation of Windows 10, and I cannot believe it isn't fixed yet.

Cortana does NOT search and files or folders on secondary hard drives, like D: (when Windows is installed on C-drive). Even when your USER/DOCUMENTS, PICTURES etc are setup on D: drive. This is an inexcusable bug in the OS.

I troubleshooted this with MS Tech Support and this was the technicians conclusion as well - accept it, Windows 10 was made this way. He refused to escalate the issue.

Problem:

Click the "Ask Me Anything" bar on bottom left of screen. Type a file or folder on D drive = no results are returned.

Even if you click to search MY STUFF, you get no results. Typing any filename that is stored on C-drive works, and immediately shows the file/path.

1) It is NOT a Windows Indexing issue, as D: drive (and all sub folders) in an Included location and "Indexing is complete".

2) It is NOT a corrupt index, as I tried to REBUILD the Index several times. Index troubleshooters says all OK.

3) It is NOT a drive rights issue, as a right-click on D drive has "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed.." checked

4) It is NOT a corrupt Windows install, as I did a fresh Windows 10 Pro install from day 1.

5) No, its REALLY not a corrupt Windows install, as the MS Technician wasted 4 hours of my time reinstalling Windows remotely, with the same search problem afterwards.

If you go to D-drive in FILE EXPLORER, then type a string in the SEARCH THIS PC bar (top right), everything works.

But Cortana is the main search point, and it should be fixed to search all Indexed locations!!

 

Win 10 Search NOT finding anything on secondary Hard Drive

I have two hard drives in my PC (Dell XPS 8900 with Windows 10)

Primary drive C: is my OS drive and secondary drive B: is my media drive. WD Caviar Black 4TB Stripped

Using the Windows search (search box in upper right) I can search successfully my C: drive as well as a mapped network drive.

However the search will not find anything on my B: drive (the secondary drive).

If I highlight "This PC" it will search all drives but my B: drive and come up with results from the other drives but nothing from B:.

Note - I have the SAME file on ALL drives I am testing with.

If I highlight "Media Drive (B" and perform a search I get "No items match your search" immediately. It looks as if it doesn't even try to search it and not find anything it just instantly comes up with "No items match your search".

I tried re-indexing through the control panel command, rebooted, changed drive letter... but still no success.

Why does windows 10 refuse to search this drive?

 

After some digging around, I think it's likely that Windows 10 cannot/will not index my 3TB single-volume hard drive which must be formatted as GUID Partition Table (GPT) as compared to the other volumes formatted as MBR.

So I suspect that Windows cannot index a GPT volume? Given that hard drive sizes are increasing, and MBR is only available up to 2TB, I would have thought that Windows would be able to index a GPT formatted volume.

Any thoughts? Anyone else notice this or have a GPT volume that seems to index fine?