Managing a lot of files is not an easy task. As a matter of fact, it’s a very tedious work that requires strategy and patience. Just imagine if you’re tasked to find a certain file every now and then, you will definitely need a fast and reliable file search tool. Speaking of which, LookDisk is a free file search and file management software that is designed to help you find your files. Let’s find out if this software is truly worth checking out.

What Is It and What Does It Do

Main Functionality

LookDisk is a free file search utility tool that is created and developed by Vincenzo Luorno. It has two available versions – the full version and the portable version. Just like any file search tool, this software is intended to help you search and manage the files inside your computer. You can also use this tool to search for duplicate files. Not only that, you can also make use of this tool to browse through the files that you have stored on your portable disk drive, USB flash drive and even on your SD or micro SD card. Basically, this software can – search for duplicate files in specific drives or folders, search for text or phrases within files, search for specific files in various formats, search for files within archives and a whole lot more.

Pros

• Neat user interface, easy to use – features a multi-tabbed interface
• Has a lot of functions and is not only limited to simple file search
• Can easily search for duplicate files (files with the same content, file name and file extension)
• Can easily search for text or phrases within a specific file (this includes PDF files)
• Can search for files within archives – this means that you can search inside your ZIP, CAB, ARJ, LZH, RAR, TAR, 7Z and GZIP files without the need to extract them to a separate folder
• Provides advanced search parameters and detailed search results – you can also copy, move, delete or rename your files
• You can save your search results (aka “Lists”) as .txt, .csv or .html
• Provides its own system and disk overview so that you can frequently monitor the status of your local and removable storage drives
• Customizable user settings – you are free to set your own preferences
• Can search through portable drives, USB flash drives, SD cards and micro SD cards – FAT and FAT32

Cons

• Not 100% stable. There are a couple of times wherein LookDisk would crash even if you are just doing a quick search.
• You cannot fully minimize this software in the system tray area
• While this tool can search for duplicate files, there is no way that for it to determine if a file can be safely removed without causing any adverse effects to your computer system
• It cannot search for duplicate images or audio files

Discussion

LookDisk does what it is intended to do but that doesn’t imply that it already free from flaws. Even so, there are a lot of things that this free file search tool can do that you cannot easily find on other file search and utility tools. First and foremost, this tool can search for duplicate files. This means that it will automatically scan your computer for files with the same content, file name and file extension. It’s just that this particular feature also has its own limitations. Take for example, you cannot use this software to search for duplicate MP3 files and photos.

Another notable downside of this software is that it is not 100% stable. It occasionally crashes plus it will just freeze while you’re doing a file search. Furthermore, you cannot fully minimize this software to your computer’s system tray area. It does have a system tray icon but once you try to minimize it, it will only stay on your task bar. Plus if you attempt to remove it from your task bar, it will stop running so you will have no other choice but to re-launch it. I find this very disturbing since I mostly wanted to use this software while I’m doing other tasks. Thus, it would be great if this flaw could be resolved as soon LookDisk’s releases its latest version.

On a positive note, this file search tool can also search for specific text or phrases within a specific file. It can even search through PDF documents. I find this really helpful since it makes my file searching tasks a whole lot easier. So instead of opening each file, I could just use this tool to browse through files with the matching search terms.

Aside from this, this tool can also search inside your archives. Thus, there’s no need for you to extract each of your compressed files just so you could find that one particular file. All you need to do is to type the filename of the file that you want to get. Just make sure that you’ve properly set this tool to search inside your archived files. You can find this particular option in the advanced file search settings (Ext. Parameters).

What I also like about this software is that it is not only limited to searching inside your local hard drives. You can also use this tool to search your portable hard disk drives, USB flash drives, SD cards and micro SD cards.

Conclusion and Download Link

If only this tool was as stable as MasterSeeker, then I would be more than glad to give it a very high rating. But alas, I just can’t find a way to stop this software from crashing, especially when I am doing a thorough search. Nevertheless, LookDisk has a lot of good features that you cannot simply ignore. Therefore, I will let you decide if you want to give this program a whirl; we’ve given you all the necessary information to make an educated decision… so have at it.

Also be sure to read dotTech’s review of best free desktop file search tools for Windows.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 5.7

Supported OS: Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8

Download size: 3.85MB

VirusTotal malware scan results: 0/48

Is it portable? Yes

LookDisk homepage