Will Ram disk speedup search with sumatra or acrobat

[hackmole]

I have a couple hundred documents that are each about 400 pages long. I need to search through each document several times for certain subjects. Searching pdf documents with acrobat is very slow. Sumatra searches through the documents quickly but when it finds the source it takes up to a minute rendering the page.

If I create a RAM disk and put the document inside of it, will the process of searching a PDF be a lot faster.

If so, can I just put the document in to the RAM disk or do I have to put Sumatra or Adobe Acrobat inside the RAM disk to get that better performance.

 

[jolancer]

ram is currently always faster, but is that the hindering factor for your task re those programs i do not know.

but, are you using the sumatra version optimized for your platform? links near bottom of following page..

http://nikkhokkho.sourceforge.net/static.php?page=SumatraPDFOpt

..i use sumatra but havn't had to tinker with it so i wouldnt know, but if you search maybe theres an option so it doesn't render the entire PDF rather just the page your searching for?

 

[hackmole]

Yes, it doesn't render the whole document, just the page but it takes up to a minute to render that one page.

I also saw some references online of other people having that problem with version 2.4 so maybe I will try an older version first and see what happens.

 

[Cerb]

I don't think it will help much. Sumatra tends to be CPU-limited, and does some kind of slow seeking through long documents (going from an early page to the index, FI, always takes longer than Adobe's, but initial loading for most PDFs is quicker, IME). If Sumatra has found the text you're looking for, then enough of the file content has been loaded into RAM, already.

Now, for future reference, before you get crazy RAM disk ideas, consider that for just $10 more than the cost of 8GB of RAM, you can get a 120GB SSD. So if you're thinking about bypassing the HDD's slowness for any future needs, make the choice that gives you a lot more space for your money, instead.

Also, looking for other options, I came across several recommendations for the free version of this program, for read-only needs:
http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer

Also, this may or may not be of use:
http://blog.cometdocs.com/search-content-of-multiple-pdf-files-with-adobe-pdf-reader