Search Service Application

Question

I am learning about the SharePoint Search Service Application and something is not clear to me.

I just learned that I can add a new index partition and use it as a mirror or a new one so that the index will be divided in those two.

I created a mirror and it copied all the index to new partition, which I was hoping to happen.

So now I have two index partitions on a different server than the one running the crawler component, but I still have a folder with the same name in the crawler server(SharePoint Index), but this one is much smaller, less than 100mb. The SharePoint Index folders in the server where the index partition is setted are huge as we have a huge content database.

What is the importance of the folder in the Crawler Server? Can I erase it? If I change the crawler to a different server and copy this folder will something break?(assuming everything is pointing to the right place).

Answer 1

Always use PowerShell to "move" components. Don't delete any folders, SharePoint will manage the data file structure for you. You never need to manually copy any files or folders related to search, the components will manage themselves.