Solien Team Blog

The SharePoint Search Indexes

A Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) can run two search services.  One is the Windows SharePoint Services Search service (SPSearch) and the other is the Office SharePoint Server Search service (OSearch).

In the MOSS context, SPSearch indexes the SharePoint Help information while the OSearch crawls and indexes the portal content as well as any other content source that requires indexing such as a file share.  As a result, in MOSS 2007 there could be two indexes depending on which services have been started.  These files are generally stored in

In Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0, the SPSearch service crawls and indexes the team site content. 

Finding The Index Locations

Moving the index files is done by using STSADM.  The location of the index files is typically in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Applications.  However, you can find the exact location for the SPSearch service by excuting the following command:

stsadm -o spsearch  -action list

and looking at the Index Location that is returned.  More information on this command can be found here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288507.aspx

The location of the OSearch index can be discovered by excuting the following command:

stsadm -o enumssp -title "THE NAME OF YOU SSP"

and looking at the Path attribute of the IndexServer Node in the resulting XML.  More information on this command can be found here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262077.aspx

In the next part of post we will cover how to actually move the indexes on both a single server installation and on in a server farm installation.

Go to Part 2 

Who is Solien Technology?

We are a technology firm focusing on delivering .NET and SharePoint solutions for our clients.  Our mission is to provide the highest level of satisfaction and service for our clients, while helping them gain new process efficiencies and competitive advantages.

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Solien uses blogs within our organization to record and share technology knowledge and discoveries with our team.  We want to extend this knowledge beyond our organization to our clients, partners, prospects, and the greater software development community.  Our intention is to build visibility into the type of work and projects we work on while also sharing useful information about the technologies we use.

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-- Solien Team