Indexing a Network SMB Drive

Hello,
It has been mentioned in the past that Leopard is able to index network drives. I am the only OS X user in my office, and the rest of the office uses Copernic Agent to index and search our network drives. I have tried to enable indexing through the terminal as previously stated on this forum, but it doesn't seem to work in 10.6.1. Is there any way to index and search a network SMB drive in Snow Leopard? I would be willing to use a third party app to search, but I haven't been able to find one that actually indexes the server drive. I absolutely have to have this function, and this would mean running Copernic in Parallels everyday. Help!

You can search a currently mounted SMB drive, but you need to specifically direct Spotlight to do so.
Open the mounted drive and enter your search term in the search box for the open folder. Now you will see the option to select the specific location right next to "This Mac." Click it.
Since the drive is not indexed (though maybe it will cache an index?), it will take a minute for Spotlight to run through the drive, but it will. And frankly, it's pretty fast even on my setup where SMB connections are irritatingly slow to begin with, at least when looking for a file name. Have not tried searching "content." That just seems unreasonable.
Tod

Similar Messages

I would like to use time Machine to back up to a network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it

I currently have a mini server (OSX10.8.5, server 2.2.2) that I am using Time Machine to back up 4 external drives that are connected to the server via firewire 800. I would like to use Time Machine to back up to a windows network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it for use.
Can this be done
Thanks for any and all help

The supported targets for Time Machine backups are local (direct-connected) disks, and network targets include Time Capsule, a disk hanging off the current-generation AirPort (though not earlier AirPort devices), and OS X Server systems.
The Time Machine storage is based on the HFS+ file system, so I would not expect TM to work with SMB file services.
While there are hacks to allow Time Machine to access network drives, I would not consider those to be reliable. Skim the forum and the 'net for related details, and for previous discussions of setting this up and the related issues that can arise.
Remember to test the recovery with whatever you decide to use; whole point of backups is the ability to restore the data, after all.
If you want to learn more about Time Machine, Pondini is an excellent resource.

How do I get windows 7 to Index a network mapped drive?

I would like to change the location of my lobraries in Win 7 to a network drive but every time I change the location, it says it cannot be used because it's not indexed, so how do I get a network drive to be indexed or if there is a way around it I'd accept that too.

here's a solution... that indexes the contents of a folder on another networked computer - WITHOUT MAPPING THE NETWORK...
I don't like to spend a lot of time screwing around with the "mindboggling" os conflict stuff of Microsoft with Windows 7, Vista, xp-pro, etc.
THIS WORKS FOR ME... but since I'm just an "average user," I can't always explain the "intuitive" computer solutions to problems that I come up with in a sequential "step like" manner...
This SOLUTION may be useful in resolving other networking conflict issues when you are using various hardware and software.
The TWO computers I'm using for this example: a gaming Windows 7 x64 laptop, and an XP-Pro desktop. (I also have a Vista laptop, and another desktop with XP-home... but I don't use those that often - so I don't really care if this "solution"
works on those, etc.)
Anyway, I'll tell you the steps I did, though, I don't really understand "how all this works" - it just does.
Some points first, before I give you a "step by step..."
1. I can always access ALL NETWORK LOCATIONS AND FILES from my "Windows 7 x64" laptop.
2. I often can't access all network locations, etc. from my XP-Pro desktop... sometimes I can, but I don't know what I have done to cause this... and it's not to important to me... as long as MY MAIN LAPTOP can access everything on the network all
the time. (This probably has something to do with WIN 7 being "backwardly compatible" with previous hardware/software like XP but NOT THE REVERSE, etc. So, whenever I'm doing something "involving my network" ... I try to work "top-down" from the superior
WIN 7 system, etc.
OK... here's what I did... "experts" can figure out "if this is useful to you" and whether it has "other potential uses, etc."
here's a rough sketch of the "problem I was having" and the solution.
I often jump between two computers on my network... the win7 laptop and the xp pro desktop... and I wanted to have a "notepad file" that I use as a daily "do list," and I wanted to have it's contents change and be in sync, no matter which computer I had
updated the notepad file on. Now, I know THAT CAPABILITY is simply a matter of having it shared on the network. Now I originally created the notepad file on the xp desktop. Then, I went upstairs and found the shared folder I had put it in
from the desktop... and, of course, I could "change the contents of the file in sync" between the two computers...
Now, the problem came in when (from my laptop I could NOT INDEX the "shared folder on my desktop.") I tried MAPPING the network drive, and IT WOULDN'T do it...(some kind of issue between win7 and xp, etc.)
ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT APPROACH occurred to me... AND THAT WORKED...so here's what was involved... and it INDEXED THE "SHARED FOLDER ON THE DESKTOP COMPUTER" without "mapping the network." ...why this works... YA GOT ME... BUT IT DOES!
HERE'S HOW IT WORKS: (all below is for WIN 7 X64 networked with older systems like XP... this method may work in other cases, too)
1. I created a "notepad" file on my xp desktop. (called the file "bingo.txt")
2. Created a "folder" and named it "bingo" also. (made this a "shared folder" and put the "bingo.txt" file in it)
3. Did a "network locations" search for this folder and put it in with the other shared folders/files in the "desktop network" location.
4. Went upstairs to my "win7 laptop"
a. pressed the Start button and entered "favorites" (without the quotation marks) into the little "search" rectangle that appeared just above the Start button. The "Favorites" folder appeared at the top of the list. I clicked on it and
the Favorites folder opened... then I "right clicked" on the "Recent Places" folder and created a "shortcut" on my desktop.
b. Now, whenever I click on any folder or file including the "shortcut to bingo.txt (which is on my win7 laptop for quick access)...well, the NETWORKED FOLDER: "bingo" suddenly shows up in "Recent Places" as a shortcut. THESE SHORTCUTS
CAN BE DELETED since that's all they are ... JUST BE SURE you are still in the RECENT PLACES FOLDER. For example: I clicked on a "shared network folder" and almost deleted it by accident... NOT REALIZING THAT I WAS NO LONGER IN THE "Recent Places"
folder...so, make sure before you delete. It's of course OK to "select all" and delete all the shortcuts that accumulate over time in the "Recent Places" folder, etc. Also I set the "sort" on the Recent Places folder to date/time, so that the "most
recent" place I have been "is always at the top of the list.
c. So, far - and this is interesting - ONLY FOLDERS SHOW UP in the locations you visit then look for in the "Recent Places" folder. So, for example, when I click on the shortcut (on my win7 laptop) for "bingo.txt"... and then later check the
Recent Places folder... well, only the "shared network folder BINGO appears there!" (not the bingo.txt file that's in it... I didn't click on the actual folder, just the bingo.txt shortcut, but what appears in the Recent Places folder IS ONLY THE NETWORK
FOLDER)
d. Now, the mystery: (my win7 computer was "indexing" in the background all this time) WHEN I DID A SEARCH FOR "bingo" ...the "bingo.txt" file was at the top of the list... I "right clicked" on it to check the properties (thinking the index has just
located the shortcut on my desktop maybe)...BUT THE PROPERTIES ...showed the "networked location" on my desktop downstairs.
e. IN CONCLUSION: I now have the capability to INDEX folders/files ON OTHER NETWORKED COMPUTERS from my "win7 x64 laptop" WITHOUT HAVING TO MAP THE NETWORK DRIVE!!! (maybe because the index catches the "bingo folder" being CURRENTLY ACCESSED
INDIVIDUALLY when I pull up the "Bingo.txt" by clicking it's shortcut on my laptop....
you guys can play around with this... DON'T KNOW WHY the "index" didn't show "bingo.txt" (residing on my desktop downstairs) until I placed a "shortcut" to the "Recent Places" folder on my laptop desktop screen... might have something to do with the "complex
index parameters" of Win 7, etc... but I don't have the time to try an trace it down, or test it, etc.
... The win 7 indexing system MAY INDEX ANY SHARED FOLDER from another networked computer WHEN IT'S BEING ACCESSED LIVE on the win 7 computer... is probably what's happening... so I didn't have to "map the network drive" but I did have to "BE ACCESSING A
FOLDER from another computer" for it to INDEX THAT FOLDER... now I don't, for example, know whether the INDEX system of my win7 laptop (running in the background) might not index a folder IF IT WAS DOING SOMETHING ELSE IN A BRIEF TIME that I was accessing
the folder from the other computer.
Win 7 index, from my experience, does seem to give some preference to INDEXING files you have recently or are currently accessing... if that helps.
anyway,
hope this helps some
flashrob (my website: dimestop.com if you're interested... probably put some of my fixes there, more permanently, etc.)

Windows 7 64bit indexing network mapped drive

Hi people,
I've spent a lot of time with windows indexing on mapped drive. But without result. I've tried install hotfix, but nothing happens, Add-in works only for 32bit system, but I use 64bit. Using of symbolic link in library is without result too. I don't know,
why MS released add-in only for 32bit. Could you help me, how to solve this problem?
Thanks

Hi,
Have you tried the methods in following thread?
How do I get windows 7 to Index a network mapped drive?
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/afb904c1-1c61-4aae-b6b1-5cf525b9f8de
Alex Zhao
TechNet Community Support

How to index a network drive so spotlight can search there as well

Now i like the speed of the search for Indexed drives but it is useless on my network if i am looking for a special document which is backup on our network spotlight does not find one single document any other search options or tool available.

I found this page that informs you how to activate indexing on network drives. However this was written during the Tiger days so I'm not sure if this applies any more. Someone in the comments noted that indexing of network drives for spotlight was disabled permanently in Leopard so I'm not sure if that's changed for Snow Leopard.
Anway, here's the link: http://forum.multiplexapp.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=17

How can I make OSX index a network share for spotlight?

How can I make OSX index a network share for spotlight?
I am using a QNAP NAS with SMB network shares, which I mount with OS X Mavericks. They are not searchable, as far as I know because of the indexing of network share is by default not activated.
To force the OS to index them I activated this via mdutils. But this is no solutions. This makes spotlight to index the share once. But I want spotlight to index it always and keep it up to date. I have a huge amount of documents & fotographs, which is very difficult to manage without being searchable.
Unfortunately the only solution I found in the www was the mdutils-way, which seems not to work, maybe only works not for me.
I would appreciate any assistance,
Thank you,
Stefan

My thanks to everyone who has contributed to solving this problem here.
It appears that there still is NOT a good, reliable solution. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I did find this on http://jonathansblog.co.uk/how-to-enable-spotlight-indexing-on-a-network-drive:
===================================
To enable spotlight indexing on a network drive:
# mdutil /Volumes/name -i on
To disable the indexing of a connected network drive:
# mdutil /Volumes/name -i off
To check the status of indexing on a connected network drive:
# mdutil /Volumes/name -s
===================================
And, I found this on the Synology NAS forums:
cd /Volumes
mdutil shareName -i on
mdimport -Vp ./shareName
where shareName = name of your share
I have used the mdutil /Volumes/name -i on, and it seems to work.
But, if I understand it correctly, it is a one-time indexing -- the index is NOT keep up-to-date with changes.
So, how can we keep the index up-to-date?
My thought was to schedule a Terminal file to execute each night with the mdutil code.
Would this work? If so, how would you setup a scheduled run?
Would it have to be done on each Mac that accesses the Share?

Network storage drive...where can I learn about these?

I have so many questions, and frankly, the answers I've seen looking (briefly, admittedly) around these threads scare me. Gee, Wally, what ever happened to Apple as the computer you didn't have to know computer programming to use?
Now, before you all get your panties in a bunch telling me that I'm responsible for knowing how to use my hardware, I know...and I do want to know.
So what I want to know now is how can I learn about the various types of "shares", and what they mean for hooking up a network drive for backup, etc.
I have a WD 1TB drive which I believe uses "SMB", whatever that is. It's got two folders on it currently, "Public" which I can access, and "WD Backup", which I can't. I also can't seem to use it as a Time Machine drive, which is what I want to do with it. And, or course, I can't re-format it, which I'd love to do as my wife hates the folder designations on it, and would like to have one folder called "iMac Backup" on it.
Answers which don't involve Terminal will get extra points, but I've dealt with Terminal before, so take your best shot. And ask for clarification if you need it. Thanks.

Unfortunately, networking and file-sharing aren't quite so simple in part because there's decades of history and dozens of companies involved in getting it into the current state. If you want dead-simple, you can get an Apple Time Capsule or AirPort with an external drive and be done with it. However, if you really want the most from network storage, you'll probably want to read up...
WD make a number of drive, some network-attached, some not. We'll assume that you have one of their basic consumer network-attached drives.
"SMB" stands for "Server Message Block" protocol and it was the local area network file-sharing protocol developed for Windows for Workgroups circa 1992 (it was later renamed CIFS - Common Internet File System - by Microsoft in 1996 because of the rising popularity of the Internet, despite the difficulty in getting it to work in anything but a small local network). SMB/CIFS is still widely used today for Microsoft Windows networks, though much of the equipment that serves those files are built on Linux or FreeBSD and not Windows.
Access to shares on an SMB server (such as your hard disk) is controlled through a configuration utility provided with the drive or via a web application built into the device (that you access through your browser). Consult your manual. Generally speaking, however, SMB servers offer different ways of identifying whether or not you can access a share: 1) based on the computer connecting (in which case, everyone is considered the same user), or 2) based on a username/password combo. Generally a server will only operate in one mode. Shared directories can also allow or deny "guest" access (access without a password). All of this should be configurable through the drive utility or web application which you access with your web browser. Generally, an SMB server can only operate in one mode.
It sounds like the Public directory is configured to allow guest access, and I'm guessing that "WD Backup" is a share that's password-protected and intended to be used with Western-Digital's own software of the same name. You should be able to add and create new directories as necessary through the provided utility or the web interface.
You are correct, you cannot use Time Machine with an SMB file-sharing service. Time Machine will require AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) or NFS (Network File System) support. Western-Digital only has 3 network drives that support AFP and Time Machine: My Book Live, MyBook World, and WD ShareSpace. OS X also has some basic requirements about the performance and capabilities of network storage in order to use it with Time Machine, so you really want to look for drives that state up front that you can use Time Machine with them (for example, WD World Edition: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/updates/docs/en/appletimemachine.pdf )
I'm not sure why you can't reformat the drive. This is supported on all WD products (though, if you've moved a bunch of data to it already, perhaps it would be a hassle).
You can do backups of your Mac over SMB, but it's complicated by the fact that SMB is quite old and isn't capable of storing information about the file permissions, ownership, etc. It will be reliable for data files, but not for applications, etc. There's a work-around, of course. You can create a disk image on the SMB share using Disk Utility (make sure you create an HFS+ image) and backup to that. If you go that route, I would suggest either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to perform your backups. They are true backup tools, not versioning tools like Time Machine.

Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive contents not appearing in iTunes

I'm running iTunes 10.5.1 on my MacBook which is running OS X 10.6.8
I've got an iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive ( http://tinyurl.com/l8jmaa ) NAS hooked up to my home intranet, and I use it as the master repository for all my music for iTunes, as I've got multiple computers in the house, and the device (with iTunes and DLNA activated) will show up in the "Shared" section of my iTunes source list, and I can view and play all my music from there.
Sometime over the course of the last few iTunes updates, however, this functionality broke, and I'm not sure why. The device shows up in the "Shared" section still, but when I click on it, iTunes shows a message on its screen that says "Loading "Iomega-0557fc" (yeah yeah, I didn't give my drive a spiffy name, I just stuck with the stock out-of-the-box name) and gives me the horixzontal cady-cane, and the little circle spinner spins away to the right of the device in the source list, but iTunes never actually completes the task of bringing up an index of the drive.
The drive itself is fully functional. All the settings are proper on it, I can move data on and off from the Finder, I can even drag-and-drop music files from the NAS in the Finder into iTunes and the files will add to playlists and play just fine (I've got "Copy files to iTunes Media Folder..." turned off, so I know they're playing from the NAS) so it's not like there's some kind of malfuction on the NAS itself. I've also made sure I've got the latest firmware updates and such.
I'm sure I'm not the only one with one of these drives, and I'm hoping someone else has encountered this issue and figured it out! Any help is appreciated!

Hi , I have similar problem..It was working initially and for some reason it stopped. I device shows up on the SHARED , however when I click it doesnt load the songs..however I am able to stream songs from Iomega NAS via other DLNA clients (ace player etc in ipad)...

Copying files from Mac to PC network shared drives.

Copying files from Mac to PC network shared drives.
We have shared mounted drives in AIX Fusion that we can pull files from and copy to the mac, however we can not copy files from the mac to the drives.
“Error in user parameter list (-50)” With MS DOS-Formatted Volume.”
The drives are mapped on the mac using SMB. We can go to the files on the mac and use “save as” and this works and saves them on the shared drives.
We can not drag and copy them to the shared drives. Every time it fails and we get the above error. We can create folders but not move any files.
When we look up the error, it is referring to certain characters that can but used in a Max OS X filename and are not allowed in MS-DOS filenames. We are not using any of the characters not allowed.
The drives have all the basic set up in AIX, RWC. All the PC's we have can drag files to and from all our shared drives.

Either install software which enables the Mac to write to NTFS drives, or MacDrive on the PC, or reformat any drives you'll be using to share files between the computers as either FAT32 or exFAT.
(88270)

Network Storage Drive for Mac OSX and XP

Hi I am a new apple owner with a MBP 17 running OSX. I also have two other PC laptops in the house.
I have a Linksys G wireless router.
What I would like to do is to have a dual HD enclosure that I can plug into my wireless router so that I can share data between my MBP and my PC laptops via the network. I would like to use dual HDs so I can mirror them for back up purposes.
My question is how do I set this up so both my MBP and PCs can use the same HD to store/share data? Suggestions on specific hardware to buy would be welcome as well.
Thanks for you help,
Vik

You should simply get a network storage drive like this:
http://westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=152&language=en
you can attach to it a second USB hard drive for backup. If you shop around you'll get better price than directly from WD.
Or you can go for Mirra which in my opinion is a much better bet as it will automatically backup folders you want and sync them between computers:
http://www.seagate.com/products/retail/mirra/index.html

Network shared drive hang

My office use a file server that host network shared drive (mapped on all workstation). The server OS is Windows Server 2008 SP 2, and all clients on Windows 7.
For the past 6 months the network shared drive sometimes hang, but lately becoming more and more frequent.
I cant really put my finger on it, as I checked on the server Event viewer, I can't really find anything related (or it could be I missed it).
I notice many users work online with their office documents (excel, words), they open and save directly to the shared drive, is this also contribute to the shared drive hang?
Help! thanks

Hi,
you should check using resourece monitor and perfmon whether you are running into resource depletion issues.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.08.pulse.aspx
Office documents surely use resources, but a far more common culprit is storing outlook .pst and . ost files on a networkdrive. Aside for being not supported, it is a real fileserver killer. You will have events in system event log indicating issues in such
case.
Especially look for events regarding Srv, SMB, MrxSMB or the server service as all are closely related to fileshares.
Also pretty common, is antivirus doing realtime scan both server as client side, possibly combined with some other filter drivers. (like described in:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822219
there is a nice guide 'performance tuning for fileservers' on Microsoft download.i recommend you take a look.
MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP
ok, I will try to monitor those points you recommended. Thank you.

Looking for updated firmware for MDHD500-N 31704000 R IOMEGA Network Hard Drive

I'm looking for newer firmware for my IOMEGA Network Hard Drive, model MDHD500-N 31704000 R.
My current firmware level is K1.04 L1.0 W1.1 but I'm encountering weird write commit kind of problems. Low level formatted the drive already and did a factory reset.
Running Windows 7.
thanks.

Hi everybody,
Finally, I found the file on a french driver dump :
The descripton of the file is at : http://www.touslesdrivers.com/index.php?v_page=23&v_code=22439&v_langue=en
You can down load the firmware at : http://fichiers.touslesdrivers.com/22439/storcenter_home_firmware-k108w15-d31462802.bin
Link are still up and upgrade with the new firmware is ok.
I still have upnp av error while I try to access the disk throught a media player connected on my TV, but the rest of the K108 firmware is totally functionnal on my drive.
I keep a backup of the firmware file, and I can upload it to everyone needed it, (specially if you can't download teh firmware from the link I post below)
Hope it could help someone...
Does someone know if it is possible to get a low level access to the drive and to the code its running (I need to debug my upnp problem...) ?

Ultra slow indexing while connecting external drives

Hi, this is my first post.
I've some problems with Lion, under Snow Leopard it was all ok.
This is my setup:
i've 73 (yes 73) external hard drives each one containing tons and tons of files (textures, libraries, images, documents).
Under Snow Leopard, when i plugged one hard drive and searched for a file (example: .rar) in Spotlight, in few seconds i had the complete listing of the .rar files in that hard drive.
Now, if I plug that hard drive, i see some strange issues:
-it lists always some 1040 - 1060 .rar files even if i have 18567 .rar files on that drive. This happens in few seconds, then it starts indexing - always
-the scroll is VERY slow compared to the scroll in snow leopard, i mean it takes time to get to 10.000+ files option (snow leopard was faster)
-i've to index each new hard drive i connect to my macbook, and this is time wasting. In Snow Leopard i just connected new hard drives with files on them and in few seconds i had access to the whole list of .rar files.
Now, is this a known Spotlight bug?
This is the reason why i dual booted with SL, because when I have to search files on a new external HD it's faster for me to reboot the machine, enter SL, do a search, copy the file on the internal HD and then reboot in Lion. This is not good.
Any ideas?
Don't tell me to upgrade to 10.7.x please... that does not resolve this issue.
Thanks
ps: my internal HD is a Seagate Momentus XT 500gb 7200 with 4gb SSD fwSD25

I am having the same problem and I just heard back from an Apple Tec stating that the engineers purposly removed the ability to Spotlight External / Networked hard Drives with Lion OS.
WHAT THE H*LL WERE THEY THINKING. Why would the engineers take out the the ability to index External and Networked Drives?
Removing this feature slows me down to a crawl. I have 100's of files stored on USB Hard Drives at home and 1000's of files store on our company Network at work that I now have to look at line by line and folder by folder to find a file that I need.
What is the point of SpotLight if I can not find anything store on external drives?

Lost the ability to Spotlight Index my Time Machine drive

I have an external, Firewire Time Machine drive which has been working without problems up to now. This evening I had a backup which hung up in the "preparing" stage (no file transfers begun yet). When I went to look in the console, there was a device error apparently related to trying to detect the powered-on state of my Time Machine drive. Apparently Time Machine did not handle this gracefully. In the course of trying to clear that I got into a state where I had to force shutdown of the system (holding the power button). (I accidentally clicked on the Time Machine icon which got hung up trying to display the histories, and left me with no access to the Desktop....)
Things appeared to check out fine when I brought the machine back up (including Verify Disk of both the main and Time Machine drives and Repair Permissions of the main drive), and I finally did a Back Up Now in Time Machine. Due to the forced shut down, this became a "Deep Traversal" "preparing"stage. We'll I've seen those before, so no worries. However it lasted quite a bit longer than it should, at which point I noticed that Spotlight was indexing the Time Machine drive.
So at this point I dragged the Time Machine into the Spotlight Privacy list. Rather than going away completely as I expected, the indexing of the Time Machine drive apparently went into some sort of clean-up phase that said it was still indexing for another 5 minutes (where it had, just prior, said it was going to be indexing for another 2 hours). The progress bar advanced normally as if it really did do 5 minutes more of indexing of the Time Machine drive. I've not seen this before
When that finished, the backup which had been "preparing" during all of this also finished "preparing", transferred the several MB of files I expected, and finished normally. There were no errors in the console related to any of this.
I rebooted, and once again did a pair of Disk Verifies and a Repair Permissions without problems. Opened up the console to track things, and poked around in the Time Machine. All was normal as far as I can tell. I also explored the Time Machine drive via the Finder. No problems.
So I now went into Spotlight Privacy and removed the Time Machine drive from the privacy list expecting it to do the re-indexing I had stopped above. Spotlight started indexing the drive and a couple seconds later it stopped. I tried again -- into and out of privacy -- same result, a couple seconds of indexing and then it stopped.
At this point I noticed the console was saying I had some bus errors in the I/O system, and that's what was terminating the md worker process and stopping the indexing.
So I shut down, unplugged the Time Machine drive, and went through my maintenance ritual.
I reset the PMU (this is a powerbook), reset PRAM, booted once in Safe Mode, booted normally, and ran Disk Utility again to Verify and Repair Permissions on the main hard drive. All of that went without a hitch. No failures, faults or funnies.
I ran through the list of Applications I use, keeping an eye on the console. Again no problems.
So I shut down, plugged the Time Machine drive back in and booted back up. I put the drive into Spotlight Privacy and turned off Time Machine backups. I then did a Verify Disk on that drive. No problems. I went into the Time Machine history display. No problems. And no problems looking at it in the Finder either. In particular, no bus errors or anything else funny in the console.
I rebooted and did a new Back Up Now. It completed without problems. It was another Deep Traversal backup due to the Safe Mode Boot, but it went without a hitch. I rebooted and did another Back Up Now and got a normal speed incremental backup again without a hitch. The bottom line is that as far as I can see that Time Machine drive is working just fine.
So I went into Spotlight Privacy and removed it from the list. Once again it started to index and stopped in a couple seconds. But this time there were NO Console error messages.
I moved my main hard drive into Spotlight Privacy and removed it and it re-indexed from scratch just fine. Tried again with the Time Machine drive -- indexing stopped in a couple of seconds with no message in the Console. Spotlight searches find all the right stuff in the main drive. Spotlight and finder searches find only the top level Time Machine folders in the Time Machine drive.
I also tried removing the Spotlight plist from my account's Library / Preferences. Spotlight created a new plist as expected but it still won't index that darned Time Machine drive.
Apparently there is something left over from when I originally aborted the Spotlight indexing of that drive which is causing Spotlight to think it has no work to do. I'm not seeing any I/O errors of any sort any more (I think my maintenance pass took care of that) and Time Machine backups and history access continue to work just fine. And again, the Time Machine disk Verifies just fine.
So I've run out of things to try.
Is there a hidden file that I need to remove from that drive so that Spotlight no longer thinks it already has it indexed?
--Bob

Well unfortunately the command
sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/MyDiskName
didn't help.
The command itself echoed the name of the volume and then said "Indexing Enabled", which looked good. But the Spotlight indexing stopped after a couple seconds. The Console reported the Terminal sudo command and nothing else.
I tried moving the Time Machine drive in and out of Spotlight privacy and once again the indexing started and stopped a couple seconds later with no Console messages.
I then tried another trick I've learned to make Spotlight indexing happen which is to do a Finder search for, say, all folders (limited to the one drive) via Command-f and while Including both System Files and files both Visible and Invisible. And indeed Spotlight indexing started but again stopped a few seconds later.
However, this time there were console messages and a crash report.
The Console shows (with personal information x'ed out):
12/31/07 1:30:38 PM mds[28] (/)(Error) IndexCI in openindex_filelazy:open file error: 2, 0.indexGroups
12/31/07 1:30:41 PM ReportCrash[146] Formulating crash report for process mds[28]
12/31/07 1:30:42 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.metadata.mds[28]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
12/31/07 1:30:42 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10ba40.mdworker[96]) Exited: Terminated
12/31/07 1:30:42 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x1004a0.mdworker[108]) Exited: Terminated
12/31/07 1:30:42 PM mds[147] (/Volumes/Xxxxxx Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/80F3EC85-D77A-49FE-8BDC-BB7C3B3EC1CF)(E rror) IndexCI in ContentIndexOpenBulk:Unclean shutdown of /Volumes/Xxxxxx Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/80F3EC85-D77A-49FE-8BDC-BB7C3B3EC1CF/0. ; needs recovery
12/31/07 1:30:43 PM ReportCrash[146] Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/mds2007-12-31-133038Xxxxxx-Xxxxxx-Computer.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0
The Crash Report reads as follows (again with personal information x'ed out):
Process: mds [28]
Path: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework /Support/mds
Identifier: mds
Version: ??? (???)
Code Type: PPC (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [1]
Date/Time: 2007-12-31 13:30:38.746 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.1 (9B18)
Report Version: 6
Exception Type: EXCBADACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERNPROTECTIONFAILURE at 0x0000000000000030
Crashed Thread: 15
Thread 0:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0000cfa0 0x1000 + 49056
5 mds 0x00005580 0x1000 + 17792
Thread 1:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 2:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 3:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 4:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 5:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 6:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda3ec _semwaitsignal + 12
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f16fa0 pthread_condwait + 1580
2 mds 0x00009648 0x1000 + 34376
3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 7:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ee0ea0 read$UNIX2003 + 12
1 mds 0x000091b4 0x1000 + 33204
Thread 8:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15438 kevent + 12
1 mds 0x0007e584 0x1000 + 513412
Thread 9:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 10:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 11:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 12:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 13:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00207f0c _handleExceptions + 208
3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 14:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 15 Crashed:
0 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x002046cc ContentIndexContainsContentByDocId + 204
1 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00164358 QueryFunctionCallbackContext::findContent(db_obj*, __CFString const*, char*, int) + 244
2 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001634d0 qpContentIndexMatch(datastoreinfo*, dblazyobj*, query_piece*, void*, int) + 328
3 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x0015587c comparefile_againsttree + 828
4 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00155d30 comparefile_againsttree + 2032
5 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00155d5c comparefile_againsttree + 2076
6 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001e307c -[SISearchCtx isObjectInQuery:withQuery:shortcut:] + 144
7 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001fa268 -[SISearchCtx_FSWalk performSearch:] + 996
8 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001e2cbc -[SISearchCtx executeSearchContextCracked_2:jobNum:] + 136
9 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00177e80 siwork_queueprocess + 752
10 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x0017811c sischeduleronce + 356
11 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x0017816c sischeduleronce + 436
12 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001784f8 sischeduler_run_waitingtimeout + 640
13 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x0016529c runLoop + 72
14 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00165308 query_runLoop + 32
15 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 15 crashed with PPC Thread State 32:
srr0: 0x002046cc srr1: 0x0200f030 dar: 0x00000030 dsisr: 0x40000000
r0: 0x002046a4 r1: 0xf09a4380 r2: 0x00000000 r3: 0x00000000
r4: 0xf09a43c0 r5: 0x00000000 r6: 0x000074d1 r7: 0x00000000
r8: 0x003fc080 r9: 0x00000000 r10: 0x00000000 r11: 0x44000444
r12: 0x92ede094 r13: 0x00000000 r14: 0x00000000 r15: 0x00373410
r16: 0x00000000 r17: 0x00239e98 r18: 0x00000001 r19: 0x00227b9c
r20: 0x00000000 r21: 0x00245554 r22: 0x00000001 r23: 0x00000001
r24: 0x00000000 r25: 0x00000005 r26: 0x00000000 r27: 0x00000000
r28: 0x00000000 r29: 0x00000005 r30: 0xf09a43c0 r31: 0x00204610
cr: 0x24000444 xer: 0x20000004 lr: 0x002046a4 ctr: 0x92ede094
vrsave: 0x00000000
Binary Images:
0x1000 - 0xc1ffb mds ??? (???) <af9cc958b4b030835101ff024186c7d3> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework /Support/mds
0xde000 - 0xe0ffd com.apple.MDSChannel 1.0 (1.0) /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MDSChannel.framework/Versions/A/MDSChannel
0x139000 - 0x23fffb com.apple.spotlight.index 10.5.0 (398.1) <5843125c709dd85f22f9bd42744beea5> /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SpotlightIndex.framework/Versions/A/Spotlight Index
0x1ca9000 - 0x1caaffc liblangid.dylib ??? (???) <5f078ac1f623f5ce432ea53fc29338c0> /usr/lib/liblangid.dylib
0x2198000 - 0x22bdffb libmecab.1.0.0.dylib ??? (???) <cd875e74974e4ec3a0b13eeeb236fa53> /usr/lib/libmecab.1.0.0.dylib
0x8fe00000 - 0x8fe309d3 dyld 95.3 (???) <a7be977c203ec5c76b2f25a7aef66554> /usr/lib/dyld
0x90123000 - 0x9016effb com.apple.Metadata 10.5.0 (398) <b6bb1fd5a7a9135f546b2d8cbd65eafc> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Metadat a.framework/Versions/A/Metadata
0x901ab000 - 0x902d0ff3 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.5 (476) <9073c2bfdf6842562c8b7f0308109c02> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation
0x9060a000 - 0x90612fff libbsm.dylib ??? (???) <c1fca3cbe3b1c21e9b31bc89b920f34c> /usr/lib/libbsm.dylib
0x90683000 - 0x90688ff6 libmathCommon.A.dylib ??? (???) /usr/lib/system/libmathCommon.A.dylib
0x90757000 - 0x907d2fff com.apple.SearchKit 1.2.0 (1.2.0) <1b448fbae02460eae76ee1c6883f45d6> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/SearchK it.framework/Versions/A/SearchKit
0x9088a000 - 0x9090ffff libsqlite3.0.dylib ??? (???) <7b379cb4220346e99c32c427d4539496> /usr/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib
0x90aa7000 - 0x90ab5fff libz.1.dylib ??? (???) <1a70dd3594a8c5ad39d785af5da23237> /usr/lib/libz.1.dylib
0x90b50000 - 0x90be2fff com.apple.framework.IOKit 1.5.1 (???) <591b8b0cc4261db98a6e72e38eef5f9a> /System/Library/Frameworks/IOKit.framework/Versions/A/IOKit
0x91105000 - 0x9116cffb libstdc++.6.dylib ??? (???) <a4e9b10268b3ffac26d0296499b24e8e> /usr/lib/libstdc++.6.dylib
0x9116d000 - 0x912b5ff3 libicucore.A.dylib ??? (???) <250daed2fb2e6bf114480e2e4da0728b> /usr/lib/libicucore.A.dylib
0x91c3c000 - 0x91d32ffc libiconv.2.dylib ??? (???) <05ae1fcc97404173b2f9caef8f8be797> /usr/lib/libiconv.2.dylib
0x91d3a000 - 0x91db4ffd com.apple.CFNetwork 220 (221) <00b882d3d3325526b78ded74880759fe> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CFNetwo rk.framework/Versions/A/CFNetwork
0x9236a000 - 0x92382ffb com.apple.DictionaryServices 1.0.0 (1.0.0) <fe37191e732eeb66189185cd000a210b> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Diction aryServices.framework/Versions/A/DictionaryServices
0x92383000 - 0x9238effb libgcc_s.1.dylib ??? (???) <ea47fd375407f162c76d14d64ba246cd> /usr/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib
0x92742000 - 0x92769fff libxslt.1.dylib ??? (???) <3700d04090629deddb436aa2d516c56d> /usr/lib/libxslt.1.dylib
0x92777000 - 0x92860fff libxml2.2.dylib ??? (???) <6f383df1e1e775be0158ba947784ae13> /usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib
0x928aa000 - 0x928b9fff com.apple.DSObjCWrappers.Framework 1.2 (1.2) <2411674c821a8907449ac741ce6a40c3> /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DSObjCWrappers.framework/Versions/A/DSObjCWra ppers
0x92a17000 - 0x92afafeb libobjc.A.dylib ??? (???) <4a90e315bd1718c3f5ae09ee6c23e36c> /usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib
0x92afb000 - 0x92bc9ff7 com.apple.CoreServices.OSServices 210.2 (210.2) <bad4943629f870d305f2bc7c6dfffe2d> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/OSServi ces.framework/Versions/A/OSServices
0x92bde000 - 0x92dbfffb com.apple.security 5.0.1 (32736) <15632bf9bbdb223194b3d79a2e48e02d> /System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security
0x92e9a000 - 0x92ec5ff7 libauto.dylib ??? (???) <c1f2bd227817ad7c7bf29ec74729ac7c> /usr/lib/libauto.dylib
0x92ed2000 - 0x9306bfe3 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <8a6cd873dfa7ada786efac188f95ed1b> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
0x931a7000 - 0x934a7ff3 com.apple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 783 (783) <fd2acaf23e95472f78b8a077fa039986> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CarbonC ore.framework/Versions/A/CarbonCore
0x946f2000 - 0x9472afff com.apple.SystemConfiguration 1.9.0 (1.9.0) <d925dde7699e6231c88a41b0254a7591> /System/Library/Frameworks/SystemConfiguration.framework/Versions/A/SystemConfi guration
0x94933000 - 0x9494eff3 com.apple.DirectoryService.Framework 3.5 (3.5) <3246a5d1c6a3d678798a90e8c5cd3677> /System/Library/Frameworks/DirectoryService.framework/Versions/A/DirectoryServi ce
0x9494f000 - 0x9494fffa com.apple.CoreServices 32 (32) <42b6dda539f7411606187335d9eae0c5> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/CoreServices
0x94c68000 - 0x94c9dfff com.apple.AE 402 (402) <a4b92c8ac89cc774b85fb44c48b9d882> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/AE.fram ework/Versions/A/AE
0x96831000 - 0x9683afff com.apple.DiskArbitration 2.2 (2.2) <9c8f8ade43fa25b32109ef9dcc0cb5d5> /System/Library/Frameworks/DiskArbitration.framework/Versions/A/DiskArbitration
0x9683b000 - 0x968d1ff7 com.apple.LaunchServices 286 (286) <a3a0b2af862e9a8945072f8cb523678f> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchS ervices.framework/Versions/A/LaunchServices
0x969bc000 - 0x96c00ffb com.apple.Foundation 6.5.1 (677.1) <4152239382fb0f48abbcbf35bd04afa6> /System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/Foundation
0xfffec000 - 0xfffeffff libobjc.A.dylib ??? (???) /usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib
0xffff8000 - 0xffff9703 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
Apparently the mdutil command didn't actually delete the Spotlight index file which is causing the problem, or at least didn't leave the indexing files in a consistent, empty state to start indexing over again. I may have to Erase this Time Machine disk and start over.
I should point out that except for Spotlight indexing this disk is otherwise working just fine. It passes Verify Disk with no errors and both new Time Machine backups and viewing and restoring via Time Machine and Finder work without problem.
Any suggestions before I just Erase the disk and start over with a new backup?
--Bob

How do I set up Time Machine to work with an Iomega network hard drive?

I have just bought a new iMac having switched from Windows, and am very much a beginner when it comes to all things Apple. Previously I had used my NAS hard drive with my old windows pc. i successfully used it to transfer a lot of data from the old pc to the iMac but can't seem to get it recognised when I try to configure time machine. I have downloaded the latest version of Iomega Home storage manager which appears in the application folder in the dock, but when I click on The HSM icon it just disappears and nothing happens. I can access the drive through the Bonjour service and can see its contents in Finder. I have looked through the forums here but much of the info assumes a level of knowledge that i don't have. Is there an 'idiot's guide' anywhere to enable me to set up time machine to use the network hard drive?

You would probably benefit from a couple of things, first going through these 2 links
Time Machine FAQs & Time Machine Troubleshooting.
If you still have questions there is a TM forum, because TM is part of OS X you will find the forum in the Snow Leopard forum. Click Apple Support Communities and in the search field type Snow Leopard. Once you are in the correct forum you can narrow your search by clicking Refine this list.
Roger

Indexing a Network SMB Drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for