Windows only 
Modern operating systems are all including advanced search capabilities that make it easy to find files and folders within seconds of whatever you type. They are able to do this by indexing all of the files on your machine as they are created, and store them in a way that makes it incredibly fast to search. This technology has also been brought back to older operating systems like XP through the use of tools like Google Desktop Search or Windows Desktop Search.
As it turns out that’s not the only way to quickly find the files you’re looking for. A freeware app called UltraSearch doesn’t use any sort of index and never runs in the background. Instead it uses the Master File Table (MFT) found on NTFS drive partitions, which Windows uses to store information about all of the files and directories on a computer. In some sense you can look at the MFT as a table of contents for your computer, and UltraSearch is just there to take full advantage of it.
UltraSearch is a no-frills app, and doesn’t really have any advanced search capabilities. You can use wildcard characters, but you can’t restrict results to a particular folder without explicitly typing the path in the search box. You can, however, right-click on any of the results and you’ll get the same context menu that you’d see in Windows Explorer.
The only downside to UltraSearch is that it’s not offered as a portable download. This app just screams portable since there aren’t any settings to configure, but it may be possible to take the EXE from the install directory and use it wherever you’d like (at least my initial tests seem to indicate that doing this works just fine). As Conchur pointed out in the comments, when prompted with the download page you can grab a portable/zipped version from the drop-down menu. Nice catch!
The search functionality is fast, really fast. I’d say as fast if not faster than the built-in Vista/Windows 7 search capabilities. So this is no slouch by any means, and works for all NTFS drives on any 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.
UltraSearch Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)
There is a portable download, just use the pull-down on the download page to select ZIP rather than setup, and then uncompress to a USB drive…
Good eye! I updated the article accordingly.
Which is better, Everything or UltraSearch?
Personally, I say UltraSearch. It is faster for the things I tested it with.
@nye: my thought exactly.
I can’t believe that it can be faster than everything, but I ‘ll assume it’s equally fast. The question is whether it is more user friendly and with more features than everything.
I will probably give it a try, though.
Nice find Ryan! I use their other program (TreeSize Free) but never try this one.
I think it’s faster than Everything, after the first search. On the first search I think it loads MFT table, and tooks almost a minute before showing up any result. Also in Windows 7, the portable version will fire UAC warning when you launch it.
It doesn’t find anything other than the C drive and entering paths not on C (e.g. E:\some_folder) finds nothing. Am I missing something?
jbrown, did you try ticking the box (at the bottom of the window) for the drive you want to search on?
This doesn’t really work fast at all. It’s certainly not faster than either Launchy or the Windows 7 searcher here…
I doubt that there is any compelling reason, to use this instead of Everything (which is great).
One reason would be, that it can handle a FAT32 partition.
(And I suspect there is a FAT chance of that).