UltraFileSearch Portable

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on July 26, 2011

Anyone who works on more than one computer or who carries a portable PC toolkit on a USB drive can probably use a portable search tool, especially one that offers advantages over the built-in Windows tool that many users will appreciate. UltraFileSearch Portable Edition is a good choice for that role. It's completely portable, so it will run on any compatible machine without having to be installed. It doesn't use indexing or other resource-hogging methods, and it doesn't modify your registry. What it does do is search multiple drives simultaneously for filter-defined searches and sort the results by properties like time and date.

UltraFileSearch's main interface isn't flashy, but it'd be hard to fault it for efficiency. Search functions are separated by tabs: the Files a mand Folders tab contains thein search entry field, while the Containing Text, Date and Size, and Attributes tabs let us narrow our search with specific options. The Files and Folders search field offers two search modes, Simple and Wildcard, while the search path let us specify options such as searching subfolders. We began by specifying a drive to search and browsing to a directory. We selected check boxes to Show Filenames and Foldernames as well as to Search in Subfolders and Include Hidden Subfolders. With such a high level of specificity, UltraFileSearch made quick work of our search, but it also proved quick at scanning whole directories or drives for specific words or phrases. We especially like the Attributes tab, which let us match a variety of file types, which is handy for finding (for example) a lost zip file or a read-only file. The program returned its results in the bottom panel, which offered sorting by name, folder, size, date, and other attributes. The program's Options basically consist of setting search parameters, search items (all are selected by default), and the ability to select an Export folder and set the delimiter for CSV exports.

UltraFileSearch Portable's Help file is hosted online, not locally, but it did a good job of explaining how the tool works, and it included some useful screenshots. While it's not flashy, this portable freeware certainly did its job.