Keep Spotlight From Indexing Removable Drives

Is there a way to get Spotlight to not index e.g. any removable drive? For example, is there a plist that I could edit? I would have tried dragging /Volumes into the Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy pane, but of course, Mac OS doesn't let you view /Volumes in Finder, and so such a dragging is impossible.
Thanks!

Thanks. That's not as proactive as what I'm looking for, however. That solution has a chicken and egg problem where you mount the device, and Spotlight starts to index it before you get a chance to create the .metadataneverindex file...
In the meantime, I seem to have figured out how to add /Volumes to the list of excluded volumes, but it turns out that's an idea which could be added to the list of things that do not work.

Similar Messages

Stop Spotlight from indexing new drives

I know how to block a drive in Spotlight's privacy settings.
What I'm looking for is a way to stop Spotlight from indexing a drive every time I plug one in. I'm often connecting external drives for work & spotlight immediatley starts to index & I go in and add it to the blocked list in Spotlight> Privacy.
Is there a way to just have Spotlight NOT try to index a new drive?

Sorry, I missed that part.
Try this, add this file to the external drive.
touch /Volumes/name of the external drive/.metadata_never_index
This will add a file called .metadata_never_index to the root of that drive.
You can also disable spotlight
sudo mdutil -a -i off
To re-enable Spotlight:
sudo mdutil -a -i on

How to stop Spotlight from indexing backup drives

Is there any way to stop Spotlight from indexing backup drives?
Thanks

Yes, in Spotlight preferences there is an option to do this. I'm not on my Mac now, so I forget exactly where in Spotlight preferences it is. I believe there is a second tab that you have to click on, then click the "+" sign to add items to Exclude. Just add your backup drive.

Keeping Spotlight from indexing external disks

Is there a way to exclude ALL external disks from being indexed by Spotlight? I don't need the indexing and it just slows everything down. I know about the list of exclusions, but a disk seems to have to be attached before one can exclude it. Can't one just keep it from indexing anything one might attach?

Vaughan Schlepp wrote:
Can't one just keep it from indexing anything one might attach?
I don't think there is a simple (if any) way to do this, but note that the OS does somehow keep track of excluded disks once they are excluded, even when they don't show up in the list because the drives are not currently mounted.
Perhaps there is some way to edit that list before mounting new drives, but I don't know where the list is or how to edit it.

How can I stop Spotlight from indexing external drives?

I work in an environment where we plugin several different costumer harddrives all day long as part of our working process. Often only to extract one file from a given drive. Therefore its annoying that Spotlight automatically starts indexing these drives, because it slows down everthing, but also because our windows costumers suddenly see these weird mac files on their drives, that are invisible to the macuser. The Privacy setting is not of much use, as its impossible to add oru costumers drives to the list - we simply don't know the drive until we see it.
How can spotlight stop indexing?

The Privacy option is okay for private users, but at work we receive alot of harddrives from costumers and we simply cannot spend the extra time waiting for a drive to be indexed every time it is connected. That drive may never be connected again as it belongs to a costumer, and it is impossible for us to add drives to the Privacy pane, because we do not know they exist before we see them infront of us. The ption to disable all external drives from being indexed would be great. Or that the indexing can be stopped in the spotlight menu, or that the indexing will not start until 10 minutes after the drive has been mounted - and only if the drive is inactive.

Prevent Spotlight From Indexing External Drive?

Is there a way to prevent spotlight from commencing to index an external drive immediately upon connection?

As Király says, once you have put the volume into System Preferences > Spotlight > 'Privacy' tab it will remain there - with one caveat, though...
Bear in mind that if you ever erase that volume it will have gone from the 'Privacy' tab (because erasing gives the volume a new UUID) and will need to be replaced.
NB: It's not actually the drive that goes into the 'Privacy' tab - it's the volume(s) on the drive.

How do I stop spotlight from indexing files?

I only have 2GB of RAM and Indexing files really slows down my computer, so much that i can hardly operate the computer. Is there any way that i can stop Spotlight from indexing my files automatically or have it index every week instead of every day?

It shouldn't be running so much that it slows down the computer. It will run for a while, initially, but after that it should index files on the fly as they are added. I suppose if you dumped a ton of files onto the hard drive, it would spend a while indexing them.
You might try restarting the index as it might be corrupt. To do so, go to the Privacy tab in Spotlight. Add your hard drive to the list. Wait about 10 seconds, then remove your hard drive. Don't do that while you're working, though.

Stop Spotlight from Indexing drive

I recently purchased a new external drive - partitioned it into 3 partitions but Spotlight is being very insistent on trying to index one of those partitions that doesn't even have anything on. It says "Indexing My External Drive" and has been continuning to do this forever. To the point where I decided to repartiton the drive but no, it still wants to Index nothing! I've also added the drive to the Privacy setting in Spotlight Prefs.
Driving me nuts! Any help would be much appreciated.

Georgy
Keep in mind that the index is stored on the drive that is being indexed. As such, indexing an external volume does not affect your main drive.
Remember also, that when you do update your external drive, the indexing only updates the changes made to the drive on the fly, provided of course if it is mounted and allowed to do so.
My suggestion, let Spotlight index the drive. Particularly if you are using it as a backup. Once in place, updating the index and searching is extremely fast.
Be careful however, of using third-party solutions. Some will affect Spotlight's normal indexing process and their preferences have to be changed for Spotlight to work.

How do I keep iTunes from indexing files on external drive?

Hi,
I did a clean install of Vista from XP. I used Windows Easy Transfer to restore my As part of the upgrade, I did a fresh install of iTunes 8. I think I was running 7 before but this may not be significant, and I may be mistaken.
iTunes automatically (?) indexed all MP3 and m4a files both on my C: drive and on my external drive. These files are largely duplicates; I only want my music on C: to be indexed by iTunes. I've searched and searched here, Help and with Google, have found some very good information about moving files to another drive, but haven't managed to find a way to limit the drive that iTunes looks at. (I have 3 external drives but only the one has music files on it.) Any help would be greatly appreciated.
tim

Chris CA wrote:
By default, iTunes copies the music into /My Music/iTunes/iTunes music folder.
Yes, but I don't use the default.
iTunes does not move files from their original location. It copies them to the iTunes music folder when they are added to the library.
I'm pretty sure mine does not copy them; it creates pointers to them in their original locations. I believe this is an available option to the default.
If they are not showing up in iTunes and they are not in the iTunes music folder shown in iTunes prefs -> Advanced - iTunes music folder location, then you are good to go.
Then I'm good to go. I've got 2800 tracks in my iTunes music folder, plus another 6000 elsewhere on my C: drive, all of which are correctly listed in iTunes. (There also a bunch of WMAs which, for these purposes, don't exist). None of the ones from my J: drive are listed in iTunes and none have been copied to the iTunes music folder. Thanks again for your help.

How do you stop Spotlight from indexing other OSX partition?

I have my harddrive partioned, on one partition is osx 10.8, on the other is osx 10.9. I'd like to stop Spotlight on 10.8 from indexing 10.9's partition. If 10.8 is booted and I set Spotlight to not index 10.9's "macintosh HD" via systemprefs/spotlight it has the unfortunate consequence of carring over, so when I boot into my 10.9 partition Spotlight won't be indexing - which is not what I want.
Anyone able to shed some light on this one?

Unfortunately, when you add a drive in the Privacy field, a small file is created on that drive which tells Spotlight not to index it. So both 10.8 and 10.9 see that file and won't index, no matter which OS you did the Privacy change from. Also then, of course, if you remove the drive from Privacy, both will index it.
At least that's how it's worked for me. I haven't been able to get the same drive to behave differently for multiple startup partitions.

How to keep Spotlight from being too busy to help TM

I'm using Entourage 2008 (and now Outlook 2011) to store thousands of emails. I was having a problem where my Time Machine was super-slow because it was always "waiting for index". I finally was able to track it down (using fs_usage | grep getattrlist, suggested by a kind Apple Discussions member) to the fact that my Spotlight was extremely busy constantly updating the Microsoft User Identity folder. After adding it to Spotlight's exclusion list, the TM was working great. However, with that folder excluded from Spotlight, I can't search for emails in Outlook anymore! Anyone have any ideas - how is this to be avoided? How do people with large email databases (Exchange server access) use TM and Spotlight together? Any way to keep Spotlight's mds process (or whatever else it needs) more responsive to TM and spend less time constantly re-indexing the email folders?
Mike

After excluding Entourage user identities folders from Spotlight but leaving the Outlook identities, and letting Spotlight finish indexing them, the fs_usage no longer shows a very busy getattr process but still the TM is slow again and top shows
481 backupd 5.9 00:01.60 4 1 80 77- 6336K+ 37M 10M+ 85M- 2499M- 481 1 stuck 0 10011+ 129 14488+ 7485+ 54534+ 13264+ 4165+ 190
backupd in "stuck" state! What do I do?!?

Keeping files from PC External Drive

Ok, I recently did a switch from PC to MAC and absolutely love my MAC. However, the thing I have going on now is I have this external drive that I had for my PC that has some files and things on it that I want to keep so that if I ever need them and I have a PC going again, I'll be able to get them on the computer when I get it. I do want to convert this drive to a MAC format so that the MacBook can be backed up onto this drive. I don't want to loose the files that are on it now and I know that I can take them and save them to my mac and keep them that way, but what I'm wondering is if there is a way that I can take those files and put them somwehere so that they will be available if later I want to put them back on a PC on something that the PC can access? Right now the macbook can read the data off the drive and use it for itself, however, it can't write anything to the drive because it is formated in NTFS format. I want to be able to later get the files off the drive if needed. Can I do something with the drive where the MacBook will be able to put information on the drive and then later if I get a PC going again be able to get the files back on that computer? I don't have the PC anymore and the files are on the drive, but I just don't want to loose them as I may need them if I build a new PC as that one just broke and I love this MacBook so don't see myself doing it too soon, but at the same time I need a PC to be able to play some of the games that I like to play so when I get everything together I'll build it again.

Install software such as Paragon NTFS on the computer. This will permit you to make changes to the drive and use it for backups with a product such as Carbon Copy Cloner capable of backing up to a disk image, but not allow it to be used for Time Machine backups, which can only be put onto a drive or partition formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
(65706)

Installing Windows PE to Boot From A Removable Drive

This article on Technet says, "On UEFI-based PCs, Windows PE requires a boot partition formatted using the FAT32 file format." I've successfully formatted WinPE-boot
USB media using NTFS. The article goes on to recommend locating WinPE in a FAT32 partition and files larger than 4GB in a separate NTFS partition. Any reason why we shouldn't use a single NTFS partition?

Hi,
I think the article mentioned that Windows PE requires a boot partition formatted using the FAT32 file format is under the condition UEFI, not means Windows PE must formatted using the FAT file format.
In addition, why UEFI based PC need FAT32 file format PE, I think it should Considering the compatibility problems.
You can refer to the link below which had another explaination:
UEFI based systems such as the Surface Pro or other UEFI systems require that the boot files reside on FAT32 partition. If they are not FAT32 the system may not see the device as bootable.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2013/03/20/creating-bootable-usb-drive-for-uefi-computers.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface
Roger Lu
TechNet Community Support

Indexing removable media

Is it possible to use Spotlight to index removable media (CD's, DVD's) in a way that will allow you to search their contents even if they aren't mounted? Back in the days of OS9 I used an app called 'Catlogue' to do this but it seems obvious that Spotlight would incorporate this type of functionality either by default or via a plugin? If not can anyone recommend another way of doing this?
Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Hi, robotos.
You may want to define your requirements more precisely. For example:
1. Are you interested in simply being able to index the file names on the backup CDs/DVDs so you can find them by name?
2. Or are you interested in performing content-based searches to find a given CD, e.g. find the files on CDs/DVDs that contain "apple."
3. Both.
You might want to look at digital media asset-management solutions, such as Extensis Portfolio, Canto Cumulus, or iView Media and iView Media Pro. I suspect Portfolio might be the way to go once they add their promised support for indexing MS Office documents.
Until Spotlight, there was only one true, third-party solution for content-based text retrieval on Mac OS X besides the built-in content indexing and Find under Mac OS X, i.e. items 2 and 3 above: Virginia Systems Sonar and Sonar Professional.
Another thing you may want to consider is the following: backup your work to both FireWire drives and CD/DVD. Use the former for fast access and search — via Spotlight — of recent projects, the latter for archiving projects. For advice on the backup and recovery solution I employ, see my "Backup and Recovery" FAQ.
Note: When looking for new applications, I recommend searching MacUpdate or Version Tracker. The user-submitted reviews accompanying the listings are helpful in sorting the wheat from the chaff.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Spotlight not Indexing (or showing any results)

Spotlight isn't working at all for me in Leopard. I had just done a format and clean install of Leopard, all apps and fully updated OS and apps patches. It's been 2 days now so I'd expect Spotlight would have indexed everything. However Spotlight returns no results for anything typed in the search box. Nothing.
Could the following be related? When I open Spotlight preferences>privacy and try to add ANY of my drives to the prevent list, it returns this error for all drives: "Privacy List Error. the item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error."

I fixed it and want to post what worked for anyone else with this problem. Spotlight would not return ANY result after the clean Leopard install. I cleaned out ALL the caches with the program Cocktail Leopard edition. That did the trick. Instantly Spotlight began indexing my drives. While I've used Cocktail for years I also found a program called "MainMenu" which has an actual button for "Re-index Spotlight". I didn't need it because Cocktail worked. But should cocktail not work for you I would try MainMenu next.

Keep Spotlight From Indexing Removable Drives

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