Since the release of IBM Domino R8.5.3, released in October 2011, the option to put the Full Text Index on another drive has been available.

The notes.ini parameter (e.g. FTBasePath=e:\full_text_dir) can be used to switch the starting directory for the full text index from data directory to a different directory or drive.

It makes a lot of sense to separate the FT Index from the NSF data in larger environments, some of the reasons being:

• FT Index causes a lot of file-system fragmentation
• At some point, even with DAOS on larger environments, the file-system for NSF data can be quite big, so separating FT and NSF makes sense.
• When using snap-shot backup, reducing the size of the file-system containing NSF makes a lot of sense
• From I/O point of view on larger servers with a lot of FT data this can also improve performance

In order to migrate your Full Text index to a separate drive you need the following steps:

• Edit your NOTES.INI, and add the line

FTBasePath=X:\Full_Text_Dir

Where X:\Full_Text_Dir is the drive and folder that you want to put the FTI's in!

• Restart your Domino server
• Run updall -f to rebuild all FT indexes.

This will automatically delete the old FT index and re-create it on the new drive.