Spotlight Treating Files as System Files

hi,
after ugrading to snowleopard i noticed that spotlight fails to show certain files when i type their names in the search field. i have already tried the obvious solutions such as rebuilding the index without any success.
few things i noticed:
- the files are on a volume mounted on /Volumes/Data
- the files are in a subdirectory "private"
- they are contained in the spotlight index
weird thing is that if i do an mdls on one of the files spotlight does not show i am getting this:
mdls /Volumes/Data/private/entertainment/music/nightwish/albums/Oceanborn/Sleeping\ Sun.mp3
kMDItemContentCreationDate = 2008-11-11 15:46:43 +0100
kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2009-09-14 14:26:42 +0200
kMDItemContentType = "public.mp3"
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
"public.mp3",
"public.audio",
"public.audiovisual-content",
"public.data",
"public.item",
"public.content"
kMDItemDisplayName = "Sleeping Sun.mp3"
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2009-09-14 14:26:42 +0200
kMDItemFSCreationDate = 2008-11-11 15:46:43 +0100
kMDItemFSCreatorCode = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags = 0
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon = 0
kMDItemFSInvisible = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = 0
kMDItemFSIsStationery = 0
kMDItemFSLabel = 0
kMDItemFSName = "Sleeping Sun.mp3"
kMDItemFSNodeCount = 0
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID = 0
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID = 502
kMDItemFSSize = 6023788
kMDItemFSTypeCode = ""
kMDItemKind = "MP3 Audio File"
*kMDItemSupportFileType = (*
MDSystemFile
why is it considered a system file in kMDItemSupportFileType? i also noticed when i do an mdls on the "private" directory it is also considered a system file/folder.
all other files that are shown by spotlight do not have the MDSystemFile type. is there any way i can get this fixed so that spotlight does not consider any of my files on /Volumes/Data system files anymore and shows them?
any help is appreciated...
cheers
--bruno

The problem is the name of the folder "private"--evidently Spotlight will only regard a folder of that name, no matter where it is, as the same class as the official /private folder, which is a container for system files. While Spotlight will index anything it considers a system file, it won't display search results containing such a file unless you explicitly tell it to.
I'm afraid you only have two choices:
1. Rename "private" to something else
2. Do your Spotlight searches by Command-F and put the option for System Files in your drop down list so you can access it reasonably quickly
I suspect the easiest is to just rename the folder, dropping the "e" will solve the problem. Indeed, "privat" is a perfectly good word in several languages. Pretend you speak Catalan, that's kind of classy.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

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glkdfhgkdfjghdfkgjhdfkgjh wrote:
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