Hard drive prioritizing for searches

[mdjorie]

Hi guys,

 

Alfred's becoming a bit annoying to use due to the mismatched priority it gives to one drive over the other. Allow me to elaborate:

 

Drive A is my primary SSD, which has the most pertinent information.

Drive B is a secondary (platter) drive on my machine, which is mostly mass storage, but from time to time I need some stuff on it. 

 

However, Alfred seems to prioritize Drive B in its searches, to the point where it's actively *not* finding more relevant files in Drive A. So then I wonder "Hey, Alfred can't find it, am I typing things correctly?" The answer invariably turns out to be "yes" -- I typed things in correctly, but Alfred returned a bunch of crap from Drive B instead of that one file I need on Drive A.

 

Example:

 

I have a file called "Songs to Download" on Drive A, a file I frequently access because I save names of songs I'll want to purchase in the future. I made "o" stand in for "open" in my Alfred. So when I type in:

 

* o so -- I get a bunch of "So" files that are on Drive B, "songs to download" is not even part of the list

* o son -- I get a bunch of Sony camera photos that are on Drive B, "songs to download" is not even part of the list

* o song -- I get a bunch of songs on Drive B, half of which do not include the word "song" in their titles, "songs to download" is not even part of the list

* o songs -- I finally get "songs to download" as a top result, even though I've accessed this file 1000x more than any other file that starts with "so."

 

If I remove Drive B from the Search Scope list, everything goes magically delicious -- but then 2/3s of my overall information can't be accessed. Also, I didn't add the entire Drive B, just the main Documents folder within which the most pertinent Drive B information resides.

 

Any thoughts? What am I doing wrong? I tried adding the Drive A Home folder in the Search Scope, and even the most-often-used folder from Drive A into the Search Scope -- neither helped. Neither did Clearing Knowledge, and starting from scratch.

 

Thanks a bunch!

 

Helpful info: Alfred 2.5.1(308). But I've had the same issues for quite a while, regardless of Alfred version. Also, here's a pic of the Search Scope: http://cl.ly/image/3i050C044516   ~/Documents usually isn't on there -- that was just a test that made no difference. I also recently removed all the extraneous paths that I never search, just to make sure that wasn't screwing things up. Nothing changed. 

Edited November 7, 2014 by mdjorie

[Andrew]

Hi guys,

 

Any thoughts? What am I doing wrong? I tried adding the Drive A Home folder in the Search Scope, and even the most-often-used folder from Drive A into the Search Scope -- neither helped. Neither did Clearing Knowledge, and starting from scratch.

 

 

The base sorting is provided by OS X's last used metadata, Alfred only subsequently uses his much more precise internal knowledge once you have started opening files from within Alfred.

 

I think your case would be much better suited to creating a workflow with more specific file filters to replace the default 'open' keyword. You could create a filter which only searches drive A for example. You could even search for specific file types on specific drives.

 

Try adding the workflow example "Filter for folders in Home" from the [+] button in the Workflow prefs, and changing the search scope and file types within that workflow to suit your searches. Once you are happy with that, you can add more filters in the same workflow. I think you'll get much more satisfying and accurate search results this way.

 

Let me know how you get on and if you need a hand!

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[mdjorie]

The base sorting is provided by OS X's last used metadata, Alfred only subsequently uses his much more precise internal knowledge once you have started opening files from within Alfred.

 

 

My thought exactly. I figured that after opening "Songs to Download" the umpteenth time, Alfred would start prioritizing that file above all others, regardless of drive -- but it doesn't. In fact, I open that file so frequently that when I remove Drive B (which Alfred heavily prioritizes), all I have to type in is "o s" and it'll autofill Songs to Download as the first result; I open it that frequently.

 

I'm hesitant to use your workflow suggestion because most of the time I don't know where a file is located. For example, I could be searching for some old image from four years ago, that may either be on Drive A or Drive B. Alfred finds it perhaps half the time, depending on the drive it's on (even if I'm typing in exact file name matches into the search). On the other hand, Spotlight honey-badgers the search -- i.e., it don't care which drive the file is on, it displays the file as relevant either way. So invariably I get the result I need, sooner.

 

Given how awesome Alfred is for pretty much everything else, I'd love any other tips on how I could prioritize Drive A above all others. I don't think it's right to have to first search Drive A, then if nothing is found, search Drive B. That seems kinda lame for such a powerful program -- unless I'm misunderstanding the "workflows" suggestion?

 

Thanks for the reply either way!

[Andrew]

 

Given how awesome Alfred is for pretty much everything else, I'd love any other tips on how I could prioritize Drive A above all others. I don't think it's right to have to first search Drive A, then if nothing is found, search Drive B. That seems kinda lame for such a powerful program -- unless I'm misunderstanding the "workflows" suggestion?

 

Thanks for the reply either way!

 

When Alfred does a query to OS X's metadata server, it's not possible to prioritise drives. Having said that, when you open "Songs to Download" on any drive, OS X should mark it as used which means OS X will return this to Alfred in the initial returned list of files.

 

What I think is happening is OS X isn't marking the file as used so its last used flag isn't updating... this means the file isn't even being returned to Alfred until all the other "more relevant" files are no longer relevant. If a file isn't returned to Alfred, he can't show it in his list using his own knowledge.

 

Before fixing this, could you pop an email to our info@ address and we can take a look at the metadata for the specific files which aren't showing, that way we can see exactly what's happening.

 

Don't worry, we'll find a solution to this for you as Alfred should absolutely and instantly prioritise the files you have been using!

 

Cheers,

Andrew