Spotlight stuck on Indexing

I have about 400 Gigs of files on my hard drive and everything was perfectly indexed in Spotlight. I used Entourage Time Machine to save my huge email database to a set of local XML files (tens of thousands of new files). Since then, the little spotlight magnifying glass has the pulsing dot in it, and it says "Spotlight will be available as soon as the contents of your computer have been indexed. Estimating indexing time" and there's no time estimate; the blue barber pole thing keeps spinning and it's been that way for the last 18 hours. I've tried adding and removing all the disks to the Privacy list, and stop/restart the service through Terminal. Could it possibly really be doing what it needs to do or is it stuck somehow and is there anything else I can do??
Thanks in advance,
Mike

So I deleted the .Spotlight index file and restarted it. It seems to be going, but when I check sometimes it has half the bar in blue (~50% done) and says 256 hours to go and sometimes it has only a bit of the bar in blue and says "24 hours to go". What's going on??

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I have just completed a complete reload of Snow Leopard. When I was starting to have trouble before my system went down, I noticed Spotlight was continuously indexing. Now I have reloaded, and it's still doing it (after two days with the computer running and nothing else open for the most part). I looked for the .plist file, and there isn't one. There are .plist files for my other apps, but not for Spotlight. Any suggestions for getting Spotlight up and running?

Start with http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/Leopard/leospot.html and http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/stopspotlightindex.html

Time machine gets stuck on indexing

Since the last weeks my time machine will not backup anymore..
I have searched around but couldn't find out what will fix it..
This is what the module had to say:
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Kind regards,
Twan

AJvanderLee wrote:
There was only one thing i could not do, i could not repair my backups, because they didn't appear in the disk utility..
What are you backing-up to? If you can see the +sparse bundle+ your backups are in via the Finder, use the instructions in #A5 for repairing the backups on a Time Capsule. If you can't see it, you can't repair them with DIsk Utility (or most 3rd-party disk repair apps). Check with the maker of the NAS for help.
Further, i thought it would be something with the message "Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD"
That's normal after a failed/cancelled backup, and will be repeated each time until one completes successfully. See #A6 in Troubleshooting for details.
Besides, my spotlight is now indexing my harddisk and seems to get stuck on "calculating time for indexing"
This is because i excluded my harddisk from spotlight, restarted my mac and then included my harddisk again for spotlight. So it needed to reindex it, but i'm not sure that it will work, because it allready toke the whole day for it and is still saying the same thing..
That sounds like a problem with a file or the directory structure on your internal HD. Did you verify your internal HD, per #3 in the green box? If so, and if it says it's ok, exclude your internal HD from Spotlight indexing until you get your backups working; then you can figure out what's wrong with Spotlight.

Spotlight stuck on reindexing

I inadvertently dragged the wrong folder to the Privacy pane of Spotlight, and after removing the folder Spotlight got stuck for days reindexing.
So, I have taken the following steps:
1. Dragged the entire hard drive to the Privacy pane and then removed it to get the system to reindex
2. Used Terminal to run the following commands:
sudo rm -R /.Spotlight-V100
sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -E /
The reindexing starts, but even 24 hours later it seems to get stuck forever at the same place (with showing 5 or 6 hours remaining), and it doesn't matter how long I leave it there (I've left it going for days at a time).
The drive being indexed is an internal drive with about 385GB in use.
Looking at Console I see a lot of the following errors:
9/23/12 12:40:25.310 PM mdworker: (Error) ImportPluginLoading: Couldn't load plugin 'file://localhost/Library/Spotlight/iWeb.mdimporter/'
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When it's stuck on indexing, I can open Activity Monitor and see that there are two processes: mdworker and mdworker32 that are running, but Activity Monitor is reporting them both with 0% CPU usage. This reinforces the sense to me that the process is simply stuck.
I could try to restore my system from a backup of a couple of weeks ago, before I made my Spotlight mistake, but I'd prefer, if possible, to fix the problem, as I don't know for sure that Spotlight was working correctly before.
Any thoughts would be very welcome!

This is the thread that is talking about the issues with Time Machine;
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19753775#19753775
I have reported this as both a bug and as feedback...

Stuck on indexing backup snow leopard

Hello,
I have been having a recurring issue with my time machine. It keeps getting stuck on "calculating changes" or indexing backup. I did a disk repair from the install disk and a repaired permissions on both my boot drive and my time machine drive. When I did that it finally moved from calculating changes to indexing backup. But it will not move past that. I've left it for hours with no change and no progress. It'll scan all files that have changed and then get stuck on indexing. I know I haven't made many changes since the last backup either. Before I've just been able to keep repairing disks and permissions and it will finally work, but I'm starting to get tired of it.
I'm out of ideas... Anyone?
It's an iMac with 4gHz and 150+ GB free.

See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

Just used Migration Assistant but spotlight won't index files on new iMac computer.

I just used Migration Assistant to move files from my old 2008 Mac Pro to a new 2013 iMac 27" both Intel based. Files and applications all moved over fine and I can access them in Finder but Spotlight won't index the files. Should I be reindexing something or do I need to do somethign for spotlight to recognize the new filez I migrated?
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You can force a Spotlight index, just let it run and your migration should be just fine. Instructions are in:
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I just got this late 2010 Macbook Pro from a friend of mine after I broke my Macbook Air. I restored from Time Machine to get all my settings and files from the Air. Since I started up the computer two days ago, it has been "estimating indexing time" on spotlight search. I use spotlight search often so I really need to know how to get it unstuck from this loop! There was a CD in the computer, but I took it out and now I don't see what could be causing the problem.
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Ok so turns out it was a special case, someone did something to this Macbook at some point in its life that kind of messed up the hard drive and then spotlight could not index it. Apple Support helped me and now all is well!

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Step one to ascertain whether the .Spotlight-V100 folder exists.
$ ls -al / | grep .Spotlight-V100
If so, then remove it, and restart:
$ sudo rm -R /.Spotlight-V100
That should restart indexing. If not, then try the mdutil commands again.
If that doesn't do the trick, create a new admin user account, log into it, and try there.

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If I uncheck PDF Documents in Spotlight, does that mean it will not index the contents of PDF documents? (This is what I would like to happen.) Does it mean Spotlight will not index the filenames of PDF documents? (I would rather this NOT happen.) This is on my iMac G4 with 10.5.8. Thanks!

Hi, I can't test the Filename thing, because I have Spotlight disabled completely, but the first is so.
If it does not index the Filenames...
I'd get EasyFind...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11076
Here's a direct download link to EasyFind 4.0 which runs in 10.3.9 & up...
http://www.devon-technologies.com/files/legacy/macosx1039/EasyFind.dmg.zip
Find Any File...
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/
Hold Option or alt key when selecting Find to Find All.

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My Spotlight wont stop indexing. It says (and has always said) there is about 2000 hrs left until it has finished indexing... hence I cant use. Any idea of how I can fix this? THANKS!

Launch the Terminal app in /Applications/Utilities/, copy & paste this command into the window that pops up, and hit the return key:
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I have found an issue (at least on my computer) where Spotlight does not index all items (in this case folders) on the local hard drive. I confirmed this by searching for a known folder and having Spotlight produce no results when searching for it. I then renamed the folder with a name such as "folder_old" and then created a new folder under 10.5 with the original name. I then moved the contents of the previous folder to the new one and then Spotlight successfully finds the folder. Here's the problem...I am a long time Mac user and I have thousands of folders. Has anyone else experienced a similar problem?
I also feel Apple should allow users to select if they are searching for a file name or contents prior to the start of the find in the spotlight menu bar. Give the users some options.

solution over here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5687094#5687094

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I have noticed that with Lion Spotlight was not indexing the content of iWork 09 documents. It does find the filenames, but if you search for a term that is inside the document, Spotlight will not find it. I've tested this thoroughly, creating specifc documents for the purpose, etc, and the result is clear, the content of iWork 09 documents is not indexed, only the filenames are.
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Go to sys preferences / spotlight privacy tab and add your internal drive to the list there, then subtract it after a minute or so. you should see the spotlight indexing indicator after that and the machine will re-index. After that, try again and let us know!
Message was edited by: coocooforcocoapuffs: if your files are on another external drive, do that procedure for those drives as well.

Spotlight no longer indexes remote server

I have a small network of Mac, one of which acts as our "server" simply by sharing a raid disk set up. Spotlight on the other Macs has always been able to index the contents of this "server". Because the results from searches have lately been eratic, I wondered if Spotlight had stopped indexing the raid drive. It seemed it has.
I tried to add the drive to Spotlight's Privacy area so I could remove it again, as mentioned in a number of threads. It will not allow me to add it. I get this "Privacy List Error The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error."
I get the same message no matter which Mac I try.
I tried updating the software on the "server", checking the permissions in the Get Info area, turning every computer off and rebooting them all.
I'm not sure what to do now.

Keith Thirgood wrote:
I'm not sure what to do now.
see if anything here helps: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/stopspotlightindex.html.
JGG

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I am having the same issue. This is a real pain in the butt. Really eats up system resources while I am trying to get started doing work.

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I have been having some problems with making a backup to Time Capsule using Time Machine, but it finally was resolved (after a very long prep time). Now, "Spotlight" shows a message that it is indexing the Backup volume (icon for backup value stays on the desktop)and estimating the backup time, but no time ever showed. I went to Console to see what messages were being posted and saw many messages as follows:
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I have done that, so I will see what happens next! Putting the Time Capsule and the backup volume on the privacy list seemed to shorten the time to 7 minutes! And now the indexing has stopped. Whether this will be an issue if I am ever looking for something on the backup volume is a question, I suppose.
Thanks for the tip.
Barbara

Spotlight stuck on Indexing

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