Spotlight eating disk space os x snow leopard

Hello,
I have 2 major problems. The first is that Spotlight, for at least 1 or 2 years, has continually eat disk space on a half-hour basis. It would go from gigabytes and drain down to zero and then back up again and then down. This slows down my Mac Pro because the disk is continually writing. Sometimes it would stop if I restarted the computer but it would only be for a couple hours.
I know that it is Spotlight because when I took my whole hard drive and dragged it to the "excluded" side in System Settings>Spotlight and it stopped doing what I mentioned above. I'm trying to find solutions that do not have to do with reinstalling Snow Leopard as I have so many things that I need to download of the internet and I have to keep doing so over and over everytime I re-install.
Could it be something with the Spotlight plist? I've checked all my caches and they aren't large at all.
2nd Major Problem:
Spotlight is taking up over 20 gigabytes to index. Why?
Thanks,
spiral

Erase the drive and reinstall Snow Leopard.
Clean Install of Snow Leopard
Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase
the drive and everything on it.
     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
         with your computer.  Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
         After the chime press and hold down the  "C" key.  Release the key when you see
         a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
     2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
         button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
         size.)  Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.  Set the number of
         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, set the format type to Mac
         OS Extended (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Partition button.
     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer.  Proceed
         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
     4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
         Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
         username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
         Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
         install of OS X.  You can now begin the update process by opening Software
         Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

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