How dtSearch Works Related article:  Indexed vs. Unindexed Searching:  Distributed Searching Email Filtering Security Classifications Forensics     dtSearch can instantly search terabytes of text because it builds a search index that stores the location of words in documents.   Indexing is easy — simply select folders or entire drives to index and dtSearch does the rest.   Once dtSearch has built an index, it can automatically update it using the Windows Task Scheduler to reflect additions, deletions and modifications to your document collection. Updating an index is even faster, since dtSearch will check each file, and only reindex files that have been added or changed. The dtSearch indexer automatically recognizes and supports all popular file formats, and never alters original files.   A single index can hold over a terabyte of text, and dtSearch can create — and search with a single search request — an unlimited number of indexes.   Since you may sometimes want to search files that dtSearch has not indexed, dtSearch also does unindexed as well as "combination" searching. Searching and document display (like indexing) do not in any way affect original files.   When dtSearch does an indexed search, it searches directly on the index that it has built. An unindexed search, in contrast, searches directly through the documents. In either case, when dtSearch displays a retrieved document, it refers to the original document, using information in the index to highlight hits.   The dtSearch product line can instantly search terabytes of text across a desktop, network, Internet or Intranet site. dtSearch products also serve as tools for publishing, with instant text searching, large document collections to Web sites or CD/DVDs. over two dozen indexed, unindexed, fielded and full-text search options highlights hits in HTML, XML and PDF, while displaying embedded links, formatting and images converts other file types — word processor, database, spreadsheet, email and full-text of email attachments, ZIP, Unicode, etc. — to HTML for display with highlighted hits built-in Spider adds a third-party or other Web site (public, secure content, password accessible, etc.) to your searchable database Spider supports Web-based content (HTML, PDF, XML, etc.) as well as dynamically-generated content (ASP.NET, MS CMS, SharePoint, etc.) General supported file types SQL and similar data sources