Spotlight erased external drive?

I have a Western Digital 320 gb Personal Edition external drive connected through USB. Today I started Time Machine for the first time. I noticed as TM was backing up my files from one internal drive to another that Spotlight was indexing my external drive. Didn't think anything of it, indexing is usually a good thing.
Checked the WD drive post TM initiation, and it's empty, by the looks of the gigabytes available, wiped clean.
Questions: How can this happen? Are the files truly gone, or by some trick they'll reappear? I won't restart my computer until I hear a somewhat definitive answer, and potential solution. Thanks!

OK, having not turning off the Western Digital 320 gig drive since beginning this, my Command-I reveals though it is a 320 gig drive and shows there are 0 files, two things to note:
1. It is now formatted as a MS-DOS (FAT 32) drive instead of the original Mac initialized disk.
2. Though the capacity is 320 gb, there is only 120 gb. available, meaning the Mac files/.jpgs/mp3 apparently still exist on the drive, but are now rendered invisible?
Great - invisible files.
SO: Can simply indexing an external drive reformat it to MS-DOS Fat 32?
If so, how do I access the existing files? They do not appear erased.
PROCESS:
1. I plugged in a Mac-formatted external Western Digital drive using USB with 200gb of information on it,
2. started Time Machine to back up to a secondary internal drive,
3. simultaneously and automatically the external drive began to be indexed while starting up Time machine, and
4. now post-indexing it shows 0 files available - how can this happen, how does indexing reformat a Mac-initialized drive into a MS-DOS (FAT-32) drive while still retaining the existing files on the drive?? I am dumbfounded.

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Disable spotlight for External Drives

I have 5 macs, and several USB and Firewire drives. Most of these external drives are plugged into different machines from time to time. None sit permanantly in any machine (because most of my machines are laptops).
I'd like to prevent Spotlight from indexing my External drives.
I know I can (after plugging in a EXT drive), use the privacy function in the Spotlight Preferences. But with a dozen or so external drives (HDD and Thumb) on 5 machines, that's too much work each time I plug a drive into a machine.
I read that the existence of a ".metadata_never_index" file prevents Spotlight indexing. I assume this works, but it's hard to tell for sure, because the moment I plug a drive in, my machine seems to start indexing faster than I can create this file. So I wind up with a .Spotlight-V100 directory. I was hoping that OSX would delete this for me after I set Privacy or add the ".metadata_never_index" file. But it does not. It may be that I have to delete it manually (probably because Privacy is a COMPUTER setting (not on HDD setting).
QUESTIONS:
Does the ".metadata_never_index" file supported by OSX (Mavericks and MtnLion).
Can I delete the .Spotlight-V100 directory in my EXT Drives, without the risk of causing a problem?
If I put a ".metadata_never_index" file in /Volume, will it effectively prevent indexing on any mounted drive, without affecting the Macintosh HD indexing?
Is there an non-invisible equivilent to ".metadata_never_index" (so it's more obvious when indexing is turned off).

Glad you found that helpful.
The Privacy listing for a given external only disappears when the external isn't attached; it reappears when it is attached so either a local record of "Don't Index" is only shown as necessary or, more likely, that record is on the external and is read as part of the mounting process when it's connected. While the process of putting each external on each Mac's Privacy list is a pain, it should only be necessary to do it once. Whether the Don't Index flag is Mac specific, so that Mac 1 doesn't want that external indexed but Mac 2 does, is another question.
I do think the Don't Index flag or file is separate from the partition's logical name because, when I erase the partition in preparation for a new backup clone, I don't change the name of the partition, and the name of the device to be cloned doesn't change either. Rather, it may simply be a Spotlight related file that gets erased along with everything else.
Fortunately, I don't have to worry about Spotlight; apart from the Privacy listing, I have all of the Search Results options unchecked, so there's very little to index on the boot partition. Spotlight can't be turned off altogether though because it interacts with the App Store regarding purchases and downloads. For finding things, I use EasyFind, which, while not able to find content in documents, looks inside of everything else, including Packages and hidden System files, and does it on demand without having to index anything. Another advantage of that is, by not tinkering with OS files, including those associated with Spotlight under the hood, when a new OS changes how things work, there's less risk of a deeply hidden self inflicted bug.

Spotlight Indexing External Drives

I have been waiting about a week for Spotlight to Index my external drives, but the magnifying glass continually only shows "Estimating indexing time..." for each drive and never seems to go any further.
Any clues?
Thanks.
-Aaron

Aaron Welch wrote:
I have been waiting about a week for Spotlight to Index my external drives, but the magnifying glass continually only shows "Estimating indexing time..." for each drive and never seems to go any further.
It clearly doesn't like something on one of them. I'd start by excluding all of them from indexing, via System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy, then running +*Repair Disk+* (not permissions) on each one, via Disk Utility, in your Applications/Utilities folder.
Then remove the exclusions, one at a time. If one hangs like that again, you'll at least know which one it is, and can try a process of elimination by excluding folders on that drive.

Time machine erase external drive

Hi,
connecting a formely windows based external drive to my new iMac (trekstor maxi t.u. Kit, supposed to work on both systems according to Trekstor homepage)time machine automatically installed it's back up and anyway, formatted the drive, so I now could not read out the data, neither by iMac nor by Windows!
Is there any help to regain my datas?
Thanks

I'm afraid that you have possibly lost your files but you can take the ext drive to a data recovery centre, they will let you know for sure
Just recently I plugged in an ext drive (Windows stuff on it) to my 24" iMac and formatting was required...a message came up about the formatting however it wasn't really a warning or anything and you could easily miss it if you didn't do a bit of reading first before clicking to back up using Time Machine
Luckily I spotted the "Formatting Required" in the message and then plugged into my PC, transferred all the Windows files to my PC after which I then plugged back into the iMac and let the formatting process go ahead, then Time Machine back up
Trekstor probably meant the ext drive ITSELF could be used on both PC and iMac comps, not the operating systems
Just why you can't read the data is hard to say but either a problem with your ext drive or a glitch with software or both....have you tried again to get it up and running ?

Yosemite - Spotlight NTFS external drive indexing issue

Good morning!
Yosemite's spotlight doesn't seem to find any of the files on my external NTFS hard drive. I would like to know whether there is a way or not to get it done.
PS: I've added it to the privacy tab, removed it and it still not indexing. Also used the "sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist" code in terminal.

By default, OS X ships with NTFS read capability. OS X would need a third-party (Tuxera, Paragon) NTFS driver package that enables NTFS write functionality in order for Spotlight to index the NTFS drive.

CHOICES IN ERASING EXTERNAL DRIVE

Hello everybody ... I am new on this forum trying to figure this one out:
I got 500 Gigs external hard drive (firewire and all) that is formated for "MS-DOS File system"
... and it shows on my desktop but it is not 500Gigs but 465 ONLY !!???
I know I will never get all 500 but only 465 ???
So I am thinking of erasing that disc with Disc Utility and getting free all the memory that is taken by manufacturer formating the drive as it is now.
... however when in Disc Utility on Volume format (where now says it is MS-DOS File System I have many choices like:
Mac OS Extended,
Mac OS Extended (Jornaled)
Mac OS Extended Case sensitive
Mac OS Extended Case sensitive Journaled
and
Unix
So which do I chose PLEASE !!!
Thank you
VMZ

Thanks for clarifying that Duane but he will still need to reformat for Mac OS.
I wasn't sure (not being terrific with math) but it seemed like it could have been bit much judging by my 160s. I figured after the re-format, if it was the same than that is what it was meant to be.
-mj
[email protected]

Why is there large used space after erasing external drive with disk utility?

I just used disk utility to erase a 2 TB external hard drive. After erasing it, it shows that the disk has 12 folders, 62 files, and 852 mb of used space. I thought the "erase" function is supposed to format the disk? Where does the large used space come from?
By the way, the disk used to formatted as a windows disk. I suspect it has something to do with it but have no idea what. Any help is greatly appreciated!

HI - i do not think this is purely metadata. (though it could be with your windows disk with such small used memory) i have a 1TB macbook pro drive that i have tried to reformat
METHOD 1 (recommended by advanced Apple Techy) - select hard drive (not partition) select mac os (journalled) and press 'apply' - "this will format drive removing all data. it is always best to work with the drive and not partition, if you are formatting an entire drive."
result at end - drive still shows single partition 999GB WITH 668GB USED
METHOD 2 (after response from Apple techy) - select hard drive and mac os (journalled), press secure erase and select 'write zeros' takes 12 hours
result at end - drive still shows single partition 999GB WITH 668GB USED

Problem Erasing external drive with Disk Utility

I've just purchased some Western Digital My Book Pro 1Tb firewire drives. They come pre-formatted for Windows. When I try to initialize them, Disk Utility returns a failed message & the drive then disappears from the desktop. It is still visible in Disk Utility. I can reformat as a FAT partition but not as a Mac partition. I tried connecting the drive to machine running Tiger and was able to format as a Mac partition. Is there a problem with Disk Utility in Leopard?

I have seen some behavior like this a few times before. When this happens I go to my Linux box and dd a bunch of zeros to the beginning of the drive, this will blow away any partition tables and such.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=100k
This writes 50MB of zeros to the raw device "sdb" (this may be different depending on your system)
I've tried to dd from MacOSX, but for whatever reason it's painfully slow.

Trouble Booting from External Drives; Trying to Defragment from External

I have a Verbatim External Firewire 400/USB 2.0 hard drive that has Leopard installed on it. I have installed Drive Genius and Disk Warrior on the external drive. I boot holding the Option key and see the list of drives, and the External does appear. When I select it, the computer just reboots and loads the loads the internal hard drive. I'm trying to defragment the MacBook Pro from an external drive, but I can't do much if it won't boot from an external. I know with Intel Macs, you can boot from USB 2.0 and FireWire. Why won't it work? To be more advanced, I made a disc image of the MacBook Pro Restore DVD and restored it to a new partition of the external, thinking the operating system might be different in the new MacBook Pro because of the new settings in the System Preferences that control the glass trackpad. I'm stuck. Please help.

No, I would not recommend making a disc image. I would recommend cloning the drive to a freshly erased external drive. Cloning is not the same as making a disc image. Disc images cannot be used to boot the computer. They are large and unwieldy. They are intended to be burned to an optical disc and not used as a system backup.
Clones are exact file copies of everything on the source drive such that the destination drive is a mirror of the source drive. You can boot clones, you can update them, and you can access them directly just like any other drive.
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the drive to which you will restore or backup.
Source means the drive you are restoring from or backing up.
There are many alternatives to using Disk Utilities Restore option. Any of the following can create clones as well as perform regular backups, and they can incrementally update a clone:
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
10. MimMac (Shareware)
11. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)

Problem "ejecting" external drive after spotlight indexes it

I had posted to a string that I can't find. Anyway, I've installed Leopard on my 2.0 GHz MacBook. I had to erase all my data to install. (I was in a loop for a little bit but the install kicked in eventually.) After installing Leopard, I attached an external HD to it to transfer some documents, music, etc. that was on the MacBook before. That all went well. I have not done any configurations for Time Machine.
I am trying to "eject" this hard drive and I keeping getting a message "The disk "NAME OF DRIVE" is in use and could not be ejected. Try quitting applications and try again."
What initially happened was that spotlight was automatically indexing it. That is over. I still can't eject it.
I'm out of all applications except "Finder" which is always on. This is a MacBook that is now tied to my desk until I can disconnect this external drive from it. I'm afraid of just unplugging it from the firewire as I've had a similar drive crash when I did that on another mac a few months ago.
I've done "restart" and turned it off and restarted manually. The drive still won't eject.
Any help is appreciated. I haven't been able to figure it out so far.
Some additional info: The external drive does have "clone" copies of the applications that were on my MacBook before I had my MacBook "erased" to install Leopard. I don't have any of those applications running. I don't think that would matter, but the message keeps saying to quit applications.
Thanks

I don't have an answer for this yet, but I have an additional clue. I've had this happen to me a couple of times since upgrading to Leopard. The first time I was able to fix it by quitting all programs and logging out completely, and then logging in as a different user and ejecting the disk from that account. And now I currently have the same issue, but I've been working so I couldn't take the time to log myself out just to eject an external disk.
What I did find out about it, in my case, is that it seems to be related to the new auto-activation feature for fonts. A quick check to see what files are open on the drive that won't eject reveals:
Lightning:/> lsof /Volumes/Backup\ 2
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
ATSServer 1187 disco txt REG 14,6 32892 71832 /Volumes/Backup 2/Backups/disco/Fonts/VT102Font/..namedfork/rsrc
So somehow Leopard found a font buried in a non-standard location on a backup disk and opened it... It shows up in my fonts menu in TextEdit, for example, but it does not show up on FontBook so I haven't found a way to turn it back off so I can eject the disk. I did go to the FontBook preferences and found where "Automatic font activation" is turned on by default and also checked "Ask me before activating", which was turned off... Hopefully from now on that will let me head off rogue font activation before it becomes an issue.

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.

Unable to erase external hard drive with Disk Utility

Macbook Pro (mid 2010) running 10.9
Hello
Recently, my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB external hard drive has not been showing up on my desktop or in finder. The light is on when connected, and in the Disk Utility it appears.
1. It was naturally created with a partition on it (all of the 1TB allocated to it) and it appears in the Disk Utility as well; however, it is grayed out.
2. I clicked the actual drive in DU and it was verified as being ok. I clicked on the partition next to verify and it said "Error disk needs repaired"
3. So I clicked repair, "Disk Utility cannot repair the disk..restore as many as your backed-up files...etc."
4. No problem (the data on the hard drive is used for my Time Machine back ups and my current internal hard drive is working fine with all the data intact)
5. Ok, so I click the erase tab on the entire external hard drive...erase..."Disk cannot be unmounted"
6. Ok, I try to erase the invidual partition..."Could not open disk"
It seems every time I try to erase this drive completely im hitting blocks. I even tried this method from the OS X Recovery menu (Command+R on startup). I would greatly appreciate any help to just get this whole thing external hard drive erased and start anew. How else would I go about this?
(pictures for reference)
Thank you all

If this is your only backup device, you need to start a new backup on another drive immediately. Don't erase (or try to erase) your only backup.
After you have the other backup, boot into Recovery and try again to erase the volume. You will have to unlock it before you can do anything with it, because it's encrypted.
If you still can't erase it, the drive has failed.

External Drive Disk Erase Failed with the Error Input/Output Error

I have 2 hard drives in an external FW800 enclosure that I am unable to format. When I go to initialize the drives in Disk Utility, I get the following error message: "Disk Erase failed with the error: Input/output error."
The drives show up in Disk Utility, but I can't repair them (that option is grayed out). Disk Utility correctly ID's the manufacturer of the drives (Maxtor), their size (200gb each), so it's obviously seeing that the drives are there. But it won't let me format them.
The drives are new, by the way; they don't have any data/files on them. I have Disk Warrior, but the drives don't show up there to be repaired -- probably because they aren't formatted yet.
After looking at other posts, I tried switching the jumper settings around on the drives -- from Master/Slave to cable select and back again, but it didn't help. I also tried doing a zero erase (even though the drives are new), zapping the PRAM -- again, no help.
One question I had is whether this could be a bad FW800 cable? The cable is new -- it came with the enclosure, which is an OWC Dual FW 800 enclosure. Other than that, does anyone have any other thoughts about what's causing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Matthew

SOLUTION!!!!
I had the exact same problem. I have the original 20 GB hard drive that came in my Powerbook G4 550MHz and a couple of years ago I traded up for a 60 GB drive and bought a FW/USB enclosure for my original drive to use it to backup my important files. I hadn't backed up in over a year (shame on me!) and I decided maybe I should erase the drive and start from scratch. It was connected via USB.
At that point DiskUtility gave me the exact same Input/Output error. I tried partitioning the drive into 1 or more partitions but came up with the same error. I couldn't figure out what was wrong so I decided to startup in OS 9.2.2, I did that and let it start up, then plugged in the hard drive and it gave me the standard "This disk is unrecognizable, do you want to eject or erase?" so I clicked Initalize. It worked!
Just make sure you choose the MacOS Extended option when initializing out of OS 9 (instead of the MacOS Standard option) so it can be read and viewed in OS X.
If your computer is too new to be able to boot from an OS 9 folder on your drive or an OS 9 CD, then see if a friend or a local library has older computers that are running OS 9 or can boot from it. If not let me know and you can send me your drive and I'll reformat it.
Kind of crazy...I haven't used the OS 9 partition on my HD in YEARS...was even thinking about erasing it since I don't use any Classic applications anymore...good thing I didn't!
Nick
Powerbook G4 550Mhz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

External Drive "Disk Erase Failed"

Hi All,
This is my first post to the supportcommunity and want to confirm i have searched around and while i found similar stories to my own, i did not find anything specifically helpful.
Recently i had the bright idea of moving my whole iTunes collection to a WD 500GB USB External Hard drive. The transfer was fine and iTunes was ok with the move of data. I Progressed and plugged the WD Drive in to my Airport Extreme and my Mac Book Pro recognised the drive no problems and again iTunes was able to connect to all my movies, songs etc etc.
I also tested this with my Apple TV 2 and found streaming a breeze in each room.
This morning however i noticed an error on my Apple TV 2 "Your Device does not have any movies" (or something similar), i checked my MBP and noticed the hard drive was no longer mounted nor available under the "Shared" drives list in Finder.
I tried the obvious steps first
Restart MBP
Restart APE
Restart MPB & APE after disconnecting WD Drive
Nothing above worked. I opened "Disk Utility", reconnected my WD drive directly and found my drive listed as expected. However if you see the image attached to this post you will see while my MBP recognises the drive, it does not recognise the partition created only a few days ago called "iTunes". Also the Verify Disk & Repair Disk options are not available which is a real bummer.
Finally i tried connecting the drive to a spare windows xp laptop i have, windows will start to install the device drivers which are the usual generic type and confirm the installation was complete, however My Computer does not show any drives attached.
I know i "Erased" the drive before moving my data in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and i did not set any security options.
I can understand Windows not recognising the drive, of course it is not NTFS or FAT32. But for my MBP to see the drive in Disk Utility and not show the partition is strange and frankly worrying.
Litterally every song, movie and TV series i ever purchased via iTunes is on that drive.
My iPhone has my music but im struggling to get that off the phone and back to my MPB, my iPad has a couple of movies but not all.
Finally i fogot to mention i tried to use disk warrior however this didnt recognise any drives other than my MAC HD.
Any help would be amazing thank you very much.

Hi guys,
Wondering if you can help me out...
I made a time machine copy on a 500gb external hard drive of my 13" MBP with a HDD currently in it.
Then took my 500gb SSD from an old 15" MBP, removed the HDD and put it in my 13" MBP.
Opened up 13" MBP in restore mode. Chose restore from time machine back up.
Choose the time machine external drive as source. Then chose the SSD drive to restore to.
Said it was erasing the drive... Asked for a password...
I typed in my usual password. It then said the SSD drive couldn't be erased.
Took the SSD out and put the original HDD back in.
Plugged the SSD into a firewire 800 caddy to try erase it in disk utility as an external.
This drive will show up in disk utility but the erase option isn't available.
I can repair the disk but it says the disk is perfectly fine.
I can click on the partition option but everything is greyed out and I can't partition it at all.
This drive will now no longer show up on the desktop or finder.
This is driving me crazy!
Just want to erase the SSD, use time machine to restore onto it and get busy.
Please help!
Thanks,
Chris

Started to run recovery disc assistant on a backup hard drve-stopped when it said it would erase all data-but now can't inialize the external drive nor repair it with disc utility?

started to run recovery disc assistant on a backup hard drve-stopped when it said it would erase all data-but now can't inialize the external drive nor repair it with disc utility. what to do?

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Spotlight erased external drive?

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