PartlyReduced-- It sounds good but what does it DO?

So I am editing chapter 13, a chapter I didn't write, about STSADM.

Now this chapter was written in a manner that I wouldn't have done, but still, it does a good job conveying how to use the command line tool to do stuff in SharePoint. Because if this I have trusted the author and have let him do his own edits up to this point.

But, due to the sake of time, I had to look it over before the book gets any more stale.

To that end I am looking at the brief section called "Search Managment". In it is a brief blurb about using search to control indexing. To that end there is really only a few things you can do, like change the index files location, or modify the performance level. He then shows the syntax of the spsearch -farmperformancelevel command, using PartlyReduced, and then moved on.

But, but, what does partly reduced do? What does Maximum do? Or Reduced (assuming it is more reduced than partly reduced, but still...)?

So I looked and looked and looked, and now know why he mentions it and moves on (and I did tell him to cover the needful stuff and move on). Because no one is able to tell me what the heck setting my index to partly reduce its performance actually does to the performance.

So, as soon as I get done with these edits, expect me to explore exactly what partlyreduced really, really does.

And here's another question: If you can do everything using STSADM that you can use in the GUI, what is the command to change the indexing schedule using STSADM? I can't find it anywhere.

These things and more coming up as your intrepid servergrrl pokes a stick in every corner of WSS she can find until there are no more corners to poke...