You like to carry all your important files and documents on a USB drive but when you plug that drive into another computer, you are unable to search the contents of that external disk through the built-in Windows search as the files have not been indexed yet.

Rather than wait for Windows to index your files for searching, what you may do is carry a desktop search utility in the USB disk itself that knows everything about your existing files and thus you can use search as soon as you plug the drive.

One such utility that you may want to give a try is Dropout – this is a portable Windows search tool that requires no configuration or installation. You just need to copy the Dropout.exe file to your USB disk’s root folder (home directory) and it will let you instantly search all the files in the current directory and those inside sub-folders.

When you first run Dropout, it creates its own search index inside an hidden sub-directory and thus it won’t have to re-index files when you use the USB stick on a different computer. The search index updates itself in an incremental manner whenever you run Dropout next so your new / updated files are automatically included.

And Dropout just doesn’t let search files based on their names or extensions, it even lets you find files based on their content (full text search) just like the real Windows search. Get it!