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

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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 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.

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.

Stop Spotlight from Indexing drive

I recently purchased a new external drive - partitioned it into 3 partitions but Spotlight is being very insistent on trying to index one of those partitions that doesn't even have anything on. It says "Indexing My External Drive" and has been continuning to do this forever. To the point where I decided to repartiton the drive but no, it still wants to Index nothing! I've also added the drive to the Privacy setting in Spotlight Prefs.
Driving me nuts! Any help would be much appreciated.

Georgy
Keep in mind that the index is stored on the drive that is being indexed. As such, indexing an external volume does not affect your main drive.
Remember also, that when you do update your external drive, the indexing only updates the changes made to the drive on the fly, provided of course if it is mounted and allowed to do so.
My suggestion, let Spotlight index the drive. Particularly if you are using it as a backup. Once in place, updating the index and searching is extremely fast.
Be careful however, of using third-party solutions. Some will affect Spotlight's normal indexing process and their preferences have to be changed for Spotlight to work.

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.

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 searching CDs

Hey, quick question!
Is there any way to stop spotlight from trying to search on CDs? I keep my Call of Duty 2 cd in my drive a lot, and it's really annoying to have to wait for my drive to spin up for every spotlight search I do.
- Walt

Hello Walt.
I don't believe Spotlight is searching the CD unless you have requested Spotlight to do so.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301533
Mounted CDs or DVDs are not included items in the Spotlight preferences Search Results.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2160.html
Copied from this link.
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/stopspotlightindex.html
Spotlight will begin indexing any volume as soon as it is mounted, with certain exceptions: CDs, DVDs, and network-attached or shared volumes are not indexed when mounted.

How do I stop spotlight from returning .r and .h files

how do I stop spotlight from returning .r and .h files?

Hello jtenny,
Welcome to the Discussions.
I had a similar problem with Safari opening .pdf files. It went away when I went into the following folder: Your Home Folder/Library/Internet Plug-ins, and dragged out any files that looked as if they might make a difference, just one at a time, onto the Desktop. (N.B. I did not Trash them; and if removal made no difference, I replaced the file into the Plug-ins folder.) You will have to restart Safari on each occasion; and on a couple of occasions I found that re-setting Safari (Safari Menu) was necessary to give the application a start-from-scratch with each download attempt.
That's a somewhat makeshift way of approaching it; but provided you don't trash the plugins, and provided you restore those that make no difference, it can't do any harm -- within my experience anyway.
All good wishes from Ireland
Martin
If you found that this contribution helped to answer your question, please consider awarding some points. Why reward points?
Powerbook 15-inch G4 1GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8) Several veterans that go on and on. 40gig, 3rd generation iPod

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.

Stop Spotlight searching attached external drive

I have a new imac and I have attached an external hard drive to which I backup the whole of the main drive. When I try to add the external drive to the privacy Panel in Spotlight prferences it will not register it. If I test by dragging folders from the main drive into the Privacy Pane they do hold there and are excluded from searches.
Has anyone any ideas?

Maybe it has something to do with permissions. Do a Get Info on the drive icon. At the bottom, check ignore ownership on this volume. See if that makes any difference.

How can I stop Safari from opening new windows unless I want them?

Since Safari 5.02, there is no box to check in the General Preferences to stop Safari from opening a new window when I click on a link. My expectation is to only go to a new window when I want to do it. Most of my searches go down a rabbit hole and I just want to go backwards without closing page after new open page (Same problem with Tabs. I don't want new Tabs all the time either. In fact, the only time I really care about multiple open Tabs or Windows is when I need more than one Window open for data comparison or something like that...)
This is an incredibly annoying new behavior of Safari that I want to shut off. I have 20 windows open in the Window list right now. (I regularly shut off Safari to clear up all the useless abandoned windows.) Firefox doesn't do this, but I prefer Safari.
I tried to search this one, but maybe am not framing the question properly. See lots of discussion of forcing new tabs, but that is not what I am looking for....Can anyone help me?

Thanks Baltwo,
I will try it, but I don't want new pages in tabs either. I simply don't want the link to open in a new page or tab unless I ask for one. My initial trial has google links opening in new tabs. Why can't I just go down the paths on the same page like the old days? Especially after I find what I want, I will go somewhere else.
With your recommendation, I think that instead of pages open, I will have an abundance of tabs?
Guess I am getting inflexible in my old age. If this is the only option, it is an "improvement" that I don't like yet.
Firefox doesn't do it.

Trying to install SL on a new hard-drive for my iMac, when asked which disk to install on it gave me no options, i followed advice from another forum and created a partition, now can't boot from the new drive at all. Help?

I've had **** with my iMac, the hard-drive failed so i replaced it with a new 1TB Samsung drive. Then when i tried to install SL from the install disk, all went to plan until it asked me which drive i wanted to install it on, where it came up with a box where my options should have been, but instead it didn't give me any options to install it on any drive i.e. it asked which drive i wanted to install it on but no drives came up to select.
So i followed the advice from another forum, look at the 'Extended Hard-drive preparation' response
( https://discussions.apple.com/message/10576009#10576009 )
After following these instructions i have now got a new partition, but when i restarted my computer to install SL on the drive, the option to boot from the drive is now not available, now i must boot from the install disk, whereas before i was able to boot from either the install disk or the hard drive. The hard drive is still visible in disk utility as it always has been, but i am now unable to boot from it, let alone install SL.
Please help my iMac has been broken for months and i've been trying to fix it for so long and am getting problem after problem. Thank you!
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Hi db2
That off the shelf MS-DOS / FAT-32 drive needs to re-partitioned GUID Partition Table / Mac OS Extended (Journaled) before you can install OS X and Startup your Intel iMac from it.
1. Boot from your original install or retail SL DVD and open Disk Utility.
2. Highlight the new HD in the list of drives and select the Partition tab.
3. Under Volume Scheme select 1 Partition and click on the Options... button.
4. Select GUID Partition Table in the drop down window and click OK.
5. Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and click the Apply button.
6. Once thats done, then you can do a clean SL Install, Restore from TM , your old HD or Bootable Clone.
Dennis

Stop iPhoto from booting external drive

Anyone have a terminal command to stop my exteral from spinning up when I launch iPhoto? This wasn't happening before my upgrade from Lion to ML.

jmoorezy
Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
1. can I move over only certain albums from iPhoto to the hard drive, or does it have to be the entire library?
It doesn’t have to be the entire Library, but the albums must be in an iPhoto Library if you want to
...access them through iPhoto again to view, manipulate, make albums, etc?
It’s common for folks to have two Libraries. We often see folks have a full library on an external disk and a smaller one on the internal disk of their laptops, for instance.
Here’s how you can do that:
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library to the External Disk. - Now you have two full Libraries.
3. In the Internal disk, remove any pics that you don’t want: Put them in the iPhoto trash and empty it. (Hint: iPhoto will baulk at trashing too many pics at one go. So, trash and empty the trash every 100 pics or so.)
Now you have a Full Library on the External, and a smaller subset on the Internal.
To choose between them: Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
Managing Multiple Libraries - including moving pics/albums/rolls and metadata between them - is greatly facilitated by using iPhoto Library Manager
Regards
TD

Stop Spotlight from indexing new drives

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