Privacy and Security Change Search Index Storage Location in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to change the storage location of the search index in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Search Indexing in Windows improves the speed and efficiency of searches by creating an index of files and their properties on your device. This index allows Windows to quickly locate and retrieve the information you need.

Indexing is the process of looking at files, email messages, and other content on your PC and cataloging their information, such as the words and metadata in them. When you search your PC after indexing, it looks at an index of terms to find results faster.

By default, all the properties of your files are indexed, including file names and full file paths. For files with text, their contents are indexed to allow you to search for words within the files.

A rule of thumb is that the index will be less than 10 percent of the size of the indexed files. For example, if you have 100 MB of text files, the index for those files will be less than 10 MB.

The index can take up a larger percentage if you have lots of very small files (<4 KB) or if you're indexing computer code. In both cases, the index size will increase dramatically in proportion to the size of the files.

If you have lots of small files and need to save space on your PC, you could remove the locations of those files from indexing.

The search index is saved to the %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Search\Data folder location on the Windows drive by default. You could also change the storage location of the search index to any other internal drive if your Windows C: drive is low on free space.

You will not be able to select to use removable media, network, or external drive locations as the search index storage location.

Reference:

You must be signed in as an administrator to change the search index storage location.

1 Open Settings (Win+I).

2 Click/tap on Privacy & security on the left side, and click/tap on Search on the right side. (see screenshot below)



3 Under Related settings, click/tap on Advanced indexing options. (see screenshot below)


4 Click/tap on the Advanced button in Indexing Options. (see screenshot below)


5 In the Index Settings tab under Index location, click/tap on the Select new button. (see screenshot below)


6 Navigate to and select a folder or drive (ex: "D:") you want to save the search index to, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)

The default location is: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft

The Search\Data\ folders for the index will be saved at the location you select. For example: D:\Search\Data\

7 Click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)


8 Click/tap on Close. (see screenshot below)


9 You can close Settings.

10 Restart the Windows Search service to apply. (see screenshot below)







1 Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe).

2 Navigate to the key location below in the left pane of Registry Editor. (see screenshot below step 3)


3 In the right pane of the Windows Search key, double click/tap on the DataDirectory string value to modify it. (see screenshot below)


4 Type the full path of the location (ex: "D:") you want to store the index at, add \Search\Data\ to the end of this path, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshots below)

The default location is: %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Search\Data\

5 Close Registry Editor.

6 Restart the Windows Search service to apply. (see screenshot below)




That's it,
Shawn Brink