Indexing Service - Physically Sorting Files?

[a_gera80]

I have two PC's using XP SP2, one with NTFS with Indexing Service
turned on, and one with FAT32.

When I do a "dir" command, the results are sorted alphabetically with
the NTFS PC but not with the FAT32 PC.

Is this because of the Indexing Service or could there be something
else controlling this?

 

[OShah]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

I have two PC's using XP SP2, one with NTFS with Indexing Service
turned on, and one with FAT32.

When I do a "dir" command, the results are sorted alphabetically with
the NTFS PC but not with the FAT32 PC.

Is this because of the Indexing Service or could there be something
else controlling this?

That's just a feature of NTFS and the dir command. It's not related to the
indexing service.

[From Microsoft's site]
The order in which the dir command returns the file names is dependent on
the file system type. With NTFS and CDFS file systems, the names are
returned in alphabetical order.
With FAT file systems, the names are returned in the order the files were
written to the disk, which may or may not be in alphabetical order.




You can use "dir /o:n" to have the files returned in alphabetical order no
matter what the file system is. Or you can "set DIRCMD=/o:n" to
permanently have it like that.


--
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oshah [shexec32]
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Error Reporting -> Choose Programs
-> Do not report errors for these programs:

Acrobat.exe
waol.exe

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[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Try dir <drive>: /o:n

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Alan]

In good old DOS-days, or even in those Win9x systems built upon DOS, you
could put a statement in Autoexec.bat that read "Set dircmd = /ogn", and
this would ensure that files and directories were listed alphabetically with
the DIR command.

Alan

 

[a_gera80]

Thanks for that. Are there any free utilites around that will sort the
entries in a FAT32 system alphabetically?

It's actually not the "dir" command that is causing the main problem
(at least you can specify the /o:n switch to sort). It's a CD Label
print program that came with an Epson printer - when you browse for
pictures it must use its own custom dialog window which offers no
sorting on the files within a folder, so trying to find a file is a
real pain when the files are sorted by the date created!

I guess converting to NTFS is the other alternative, but having to
align the partition to 4k clusters first sounds like a pain (and
potentially dangerous!).

 

[OShah]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Thanks for that. Are there any free utilites around that will sort the
entries in a FAT32 system alphabetically?

It's actually not the "dir" command that is causing the main problem
(at least you can specify the /o:n switch to sort). It's a CD Label
print program that came with an Epson printer - when you browse for
pictures it must use its own custom dialog window which offers no
sorting on the files within a folder, so trying to find a file is a
real pain when the files are sorted by the date created!

I guess converting to NTFS is the other alternative, but having to
align the partition to 4k clusters first sounds like a pain (and
potentially dangerous!).

Ahh, a broken program. You should ask Epson to add sorting support to
their file dialog (either get them to stop using the custom dialog, or get
them to add a sorting function).

If you can't get Epson to fix this...
In the Win98 days, a defrag of the OS would rebuild the FAT structure and
sort those filenames alphabetically. I don't think this applies to XP's
defrag however. A commercial defragger might though.

For specific dir sorting...
For FAT32, the best utility I could find is LFNSORT. This runs under DOS
only (you'll need a boot disk), and it's not free either. The older
utilities (DS and DirSort), were designed for FAT16 and Will screw your
filenames.

An easy fix is to use explorer/xcopy to sort those entries (Move the files
one by one to a folder on a second volume, Then move them back).

Good Luck

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
oshah [shexec32]
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Error Reporting -> Choose Programs
-> Do not report errors for these programs:

Acrobat.exe
waol.exe

------------------------------------------------------------------------