As far as searching is considered, I suggest to use the free Everything search engine to instantly find folders and files.
This product reads the NTFS journal file which contains all file and folder renames and moves. It can be set to start with Windows and so be always available and up-to-date. It can index disks holding millions of files. Its search is so quick that it refines the search-result for each character that you type. It also installs a shell-hook in Windows Explorer to limit the search to a sub-folder.
For intercepting changes to disk files, the NTFS USN Journal can be used directly by yourself, although some programming is required.
See the article Using the NTFS journal for backups for a discussion of how to use the Journal API.
An example of a C++ program that dumps the USN Journal can be found in the article Win32 NTFS Journal Dump.