Methods and systems for searching a frozen index are provided. Exemplary methods include: a method may comprise: receiving an initial search and a subsequent search; loading the initial search and the subsequent search into a throttled thread pool, the throttled thread pool including; getting the initial search from the throttled thread pool; storing a first shard from a mass storage in a memory in response to the initial search; performing the initial search on the first shard; providing first top search result scores from the initial search; and removing the first shard from the memory when the initial search is completed.