Windows.edb Windows Search Index Bloats and Eats Hard Drive Space

I’ve had this a couple of times now, so thought a quick post might be useful.

I notice my SSD is getting full, and find Windows.edb at over 30GB.

 

To fix it, you can go through the gui to force a rebuild:

 

Advanced/Rebuild

Or you can stop the service, delete the file and restart the service:

Delete file

Restart Service

New index is built in a few minutes:

 

There is a patch for the issue here, but it’s May 2013, so I assume for whatever reason it isn’t working on my machine.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2838018

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2836988