I've recently installed Windows 8 on one of three drives (C:), and it's unable to search or index any of the other hdds (A: and B:) where I've stored any user files: music, videos, pictures, etc).
To test, under indexing options, I've set it to ONLY index my other hard drives, and it says "190 items indexed" and "indexing complete", i.e. only the information from the start menu, admin tools, etc on C:, and not any files on A: or B:. There should be roughly 51000 files and 9000 folders indexed in this test.
Search results always come up on any C: folders I've indexed, but not A: or B:. (Edit: it's able to search any cds, dvds, and the sd card on my phone, so is it an issue with my hdds, not windows search?)
On the start screen, if I edit my profile picture and hit "browse", it opens up a metro-style file explorer that effectively lists and previews every picture across my system, despite not being indexed. I can walk through my every folder this way, and view pictures that aren't even in the "picture library."
The apps on windows 8 can't find any files on A: or B: either. Music, video, and photos all claim that their respective libraries are empty, even though under the desktop file explorer, each library lists all files/folders I've associated with it. But if I move anything to C: and include it in a library, the apps and search will find it, though this isn't really a solution (Windows is on a 500GB hdd, whereas everything else is between 2 1TB hdds).
Any idea how I can search and index the other hdds? And possibly access them via apps?
Best Answer
I've seen other people have this issue. It's probably a throwback to the old days where your A: and B: were floppy disk drives. Windows probably still assumes that the A: and B: drives are floppy disks and so doesn't index or search them. If you change the drive letter the D: or above then it should work fine.