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.

Similar Messages

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have been unable to retrieve emails from my external disk. I entered the Time Machine and tried to go to April 2013, but could not find emails. I have Lion OS X 10.7.5 .Thanks!

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Cecilia

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I have a new macbook pro 2,6Ghz i7, 8GB 1600 Mhz internal ram, but he will not boot from an external disk with operating system Snow Leopard.

These Macs shipped with 10.7, and will run nothing older than that:
MacBook Pro
Date introduced
Original Mac OS X included
(see Tips 1 and 3)
Later Mac OS X included
(see Tip 1)
Mac OS X Build(s)
(see Tip 2)
MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)
Jun 2012
10.7.4
11E2068
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012)
Jun 2012
10.7.4
11E2617
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)
Jun 2012
10.7.4
11E2617
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011)
Oct 2011
10.7.2
10.7.3
11C74, 11C2002, 11D2001
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011)
Oct 2011
10.7.2
10.7.3
11C74, 11C2002, 11D2001
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2011)
Oct 2011
10.7.2
10.7.3
11C74, 11C2002, 11D2001

Playing music from USB External Disk

To save disk space I decided to export my music files to an external drive, erase them from my PC hard disk in the hope that I could play my music from the external drive. Trouble is, when I added the files inti iTunes, it puts them all back on the hard disk..
Can anyone help me out here?!
Thanks,
Nick

Nick: If you let your Library "copy files to the iTunes Music folder", your external drive "F" would be your working folder, and your drive "C" would serve as your back up. You will; however, have to clean up/delete your drive "C" "Temp Files" periodically to keep these files from filling up your drive "C" with two sets of information.
You do need to figure a place to keep your "back ups", or you will be in trouble in the event of a catastrophe!

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
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How do I import my library from an external disk to my new MBP hard drive?

My old MBP was running out of space so I exported my Aperture library (250GB) to an external drive. I just replaced my old computer with a new MBP with a 1TB flash drive. Now that I have the space, I want to put my library back on my computer but I can't figure out how bring it in from my external hard drive. Any ideas? Many thanks.

Why do you say " I exported my Aperture library"? Did you actually use "File > Export > Items as new Library" in Aperture to create a new library on your external drive? A simple drag and drop of the library should have sufficed. What is your Aperture version?
My old MBP was running out of space so I exported my Aperture library (250GB) to an external drive. I just replaced my old computer with a new MBP with a 1TB flash drive. Now that I have the space, I want to put my library back on my computer but I can't figure out how bring it in from my external hard drive. Any ideas? Many thanks.
Connect your external drive and use the Finder to drag the Aperture library from the external drive back to the Pictures folder.
Then double-click the library to point Aperture to the new location and open the copied library in Aperture.
If your Aperture library uses referenced originals, select the referenced images and use the command File > Consolidate originals" to move the originals back to your internal disk.
If you should encounter any error messages (like error -36) while moving the library to the internal drive, post back.

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.

Booted from firewire external disk, internet slow

Hi,
My iMac is currently being booted from external disk via Firewire 800. I have to do this until I receive new install disks from apple to resore my machine.
The computer is usable, however internet is very slow... I have other devides, windows machine, ipad, iphone and they all run okay.
It seems that because I have booted via the external disk..... internet is slow. Could this be as the OS is needed to refer to the external disk?
Any suggestions to correct this please?
thanks
Mark

I need to restore from a time machine backup - full system restore, only possible from orignial install disks supplied with my imac apparently.
The bootable external disk , is actually the orignial boot disk, however has disk problems - SMART warning, and when trying to restore this disk to the new installed disk, it fails.
I can only boot from it, and run some of the apps on it.
I know that it seems strange that I have slow internet, but it seems to be the case.
Internet seems to pause lots of times, I wonder if its something to do with tmp files on the external disk.
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Copying aperture library from one external disk to another fails with error -36

I am trying to duplicate my aperture library (449 GB) from one external hard disk to another. I get an -36 error and the copying fails before 1 GB is copied. I have repaired permissions and repaired my aperture library and have repaired both the source and destination disks. I am using a MB Air with a 256 GB HD (155 GB free) to perform the copy operation. Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks!

Rahul,
I have also used the Aperture First Aid to repair the perminssions and the library (just the first two options out of three provided).
What else can I do?
Sorry, I overlooked that you already had done the repair options.
To prevent permission issues, I'd enable the "Ignore Ownership" flag on both drives, if you have not already done so.
Your copy-problem may be caused by a bad media file in your library.
You could try to copy in small installments.
Open the Aperture library package in the Finder by ctrl-clicking (right clicking) the Aperture library.
You will see a Finder window with folders like Masters, Previews, etc.
Create an empty folder on your new drive, name it something like ApertureLibraryBackup and drag the items from your current Aperture library on by one to this new folder.
When the copy fails, e.g. for the Masters folder, check, how much could be copied. The first file, that not could be transferred, is probably the bad image or video.
Delete this file from your Aperture LIbrary (using Aperture) and then try to copy the rest.
Post back, when you discover what cannot be copied.
Regards
Léonie
P.S.
You enable the "Ignore Ownership" flag from the "File > Get Info" panel of the drive.

Keeping Spotlight from indexing external disks

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