C: for OS and apps, D: for projects, external for cold storage. One hotkey should still find everything — if volumes are configured deliberately.
Without per-drive thinking, multi-volume search feels sluggish and noisy. A little setup upfront saves daily friction.
Per-volume indexes
Enable only drives you search often. External HDD can be manual-rescan on plug-in rather than constant watch — saves USB churn.
Path hints and mixed hardware
Some tools support d:\ prefix or drive filter in UI. When you know it's on archive disk, filter before typing filename. Results feel instant on NVMe, sluggish when index spans slow USB — acceptable if archive search is occasional.
See also: SSD, NTFS, and why search feels instant now, When not to index a folder.