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.

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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.

Spotlight search causes external drives to be dismounted

After the last 2 updates I have noticed the following weird behavior.
If I click on the spotlight icon in the top right of the screen my 2 external drives (connected via USB2) are dismounted. This happens almost every time.
I can bring the drives back by restarting my computer.
Peter

Never seen that behavior. Create a new admin user account, log into it, and see if the problem persists. Report back.

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

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.

Can i resume a Time Machine backup of an attached external drive (no system, just data) on a different laptop?

I am trying to find out if I can use a Time Machine (specifically on a 2013 Time Capsule) backup of an external drive (only data, no system) attached to a laptop, and then connect that same external drive to another laptop and resume the backup? Or is the Time Machine backup of an attached external drive a laptop "dependant" backup?
Additional info: The laptops in question are 15" MacBook Pro and a 17" MacBook Pro from 2011 running OSX 10.9 (Mavericks)

You are welcome.
I don't think there is a need to start a new discussion unless you want to.
You should have more than one backup of each computer. Hard drives do fail. Time Machine can alternate drives or have a Time Machine and a clone.
The concern arises because i was told that when a wireless Time Machine backup is interrupted the sparsebundle gets sort of "locked" or "damaged", and although the backups can be accessed, no further Time Machine backup is possible. One must that a brand new backup.
Apple support article. Don't let the title bother you. Look at Additional Information, which explains what happens when a backup gets interrupted. I also am including a link for troubleshooting. C3 explains what you can try if the backup is interrupted.
Time Machine First Backup Interrupted
Time Machine Troubleshooting

Persistent Logon for Airport Attached External Drive with 'Disk Password'?

I am using an Airport Extreme with a USB attached external hard drive. The drive is setup to require a 'disk password'. On the XP and Vista machines I have on the network, once they are setup to add the network drive, they store the password and whenever you boot up the Airport attached external drive is available. However on my iMac and MacBook, you need to click on the Airport Extreme in the SHARED tab under FINDER and then 'CONNECT AS" and manually enter the password to access the drive. Is there anyway to get the drive to log on 'automatically' using the 'disk password' method from the iMac? It seems a bit strange that Windows offers this persistent log on option, but not the MacOS 10.6.2???
The reason I have a 'disk password' is that I don't want guests to my wireless network... friends and relatives who visit, to have access to the Airport attached shared drive.

you can't; try using accounts although I don't like the function of accounts.

Confirmation on How to Stop Spotlight Indexing an External Hard Drive

Hello everyone,
I know there are a number of posts on this but I just want to confirm: Can I stop Spotlight from indexing my external FireWire hard drive by adding its name to the Privacy pane in Spotlight's preferences when the drive is mounted? (I'm a little low on internal hard disk space on my iBook so I want to keep the index as lean as possible.)

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 I set Time Machine to alternate between two attached external drives (so that if one fails I will have a separate backup to use)?

Hi Everyone.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Right off the bat let me say I am using Mavericks 10.9.1 on a 2011 Macbook Pro and using all Lacie external hard drives.
I am trying to get Time Machine to alternate between two attached external hard drives, trying to be safe in case one of the backup drives itself fails.
I have both drives set in Time Machine.
From what I gather Time Machine should by default alternate between drives when backing up (I would assume it does one big initial backup on each then subsequent backups are just changes).
But this is not how it seems to be working and I cannot find a straight answer despite much Googling and Foruming
Unfortunately it seems to only be backing up to "External Hard Drive 1".
There have been 4 backups since I set it up, all on "External Hard Drive 1", even though "External Hard Drive 2" is also attached and set in Time Machine.
I manually clicked "Back Up Now" and it started to work on "External Hard Drive 2" (like I want it to) for a minute but it appears to have stopped and gone back to backing up to "External Hard Drive 1".
Am I missing something? Does Time Machine only move on to another disk when the first one runs out of space? Do I have to turn one off in order to force it to back up to the other drive (that would be less convenient of course)?
I am hoping that I am missing something and that it will just alternate between the two. Otherwise it is not the most comforting and thorough backup system as I had hoped when I purchased the additional external hard drive.
I have a 1TB drive and a 500gig partition on another drive, both dedicated to backups (my Macbook HD is 475gig). It will take awhile for each to fill up and who knows what could happen during that time. Having Time Machine alternate between hard drives would be a nice small bit of security if the worst happened.
I realize that there are tons of other options for backing up but I just want to use Time Machine if I can.
Again thank you for your help!

You cannot use Time Machine in that way. I'm not sure where you heard that Time Machine alternates between drives automatically. What you can do is create a mirrored RAID array for the backup. This automatically duplicates whatever is on one drive onto the other drive.
Both drives must be the same size, and prefereably, exactly the same make and model. RAIDs can be configured using OS X's Disk Utility.
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server:
Hardware and Service Comparison.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?

Finder window unresponsive after a search on external drive.

Hi guys,
I have an odd problem. I have an external HD full of music and whenever I want to play one, I just search for it in finder and drag&drop it to iTunes. However, I'm having issues with it on my new MacBook Air. Whenever I search the drive for files, they appear normally, but I can't drag them! Highlighing works OK, so does double-clicking or cmd+O, but I can't move them to a playlist. It's the same with any files, not just .mp3s - they cannot be dragged out of the finder window. Scrolling is also wonky, but moving between files using arrows works fine.
Please note that this works perfectly fine when searching the computer's HD.
Is this a glitch of some sort, or is the computer preventing me from doing it for some reason? Any explanation/fix? I'm running 10.9.3 with all the updates; the HD is a 1TB Transcend, ExFAT formatted.
Thanks!

How much space do you have on the Air? Most Air users do not have the space to keep a big iTunes Library on the internal drive.
They would still be on one place on the external drive. When you get a new mp3 import into iTunes and it will be saved on the external drive.
I'm not a cross platform users so not sure what the issue is with copying the data.

Stop OS X accessing external drives when opening or saving?

My iMac, running OS X 10.6.2, insists on always accessing my two external Western Digital 1Tb drives each time I select File - Open.. or File - Save. (the drives are daisy-chained, using firewire, in case this i significant).
When I click on either of these menu options there is a 3-second wait and then the spinning beach ball appears for about 10-20 seconds, before the dialog box appears.
How can I stop this?

You may need to restart the computer. Or the external drives have sleep controlled in the firmware. Or there's a problem with a preference file. Try removing the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist file to the Desktop. Restart the computer and then reconfigure Energy Saver preferences.

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.

How to stop apps on an external drive from launching or showing up in menus

I use SuperDuper to keep a bootable back up of my main drive. The problem is those apps show up in the list of apps that can open a particular file, and if its the same version on the main drive and the external, you'll often launch the app from the external drive.
This is a especially a problem when using the "open with" feature. Is there a way to make sure it only reads apps installed on the main drive.

Hi,
sorry to hijack, but I have a similar question you may be able to help with.
I too keep a Super Duper clone, but on a second internal drive - I often use the "Open With" contextual menu option to open files, and it bugs the **** out of me that I have to wait several seconds for the second drive to spin up - freezing the Finder in the process. What's even more annoying is that I also use the contextual menu to move things to the trash, which invariably stalls on "Open With" because it's above it in the menu.
Do you know of any means of solving this increasingly annoying problem. I know I could simply unmount the second drive, but that interferes with Super Duper's scheduled backups.
Any suggestions would be appreciated
Regards

Vista hangs after upgrade to 1.1 when attaching external drive

I am running Vista Home Premium and upgraded today to LR 1.1. When I plugged in my external USB-drive (where the photos and catalog reside) the whole Vista system got stuck. Power button + reboot. Several times with different external USB drives. Then I noticed the small icon (Adobe Photo downloader) in the system tray and after I removed that from the startup with MSCONFIG I was able to use the external drives.
My system is a Dell Inspiron 9400 with 2GB RAM.
Has anybody else experienced the same problem? Any idea why that happens?
Reinhard

After Upgrading to 1.21 (NSS6000), Backup Exec 12.5 produced another error when trying to bring up a Backup-To-Disk-Folder: "Unable to create new backup folder. Access denied".
The same procedure on another Server with BackupExec 2010 works!
After futher investigation the following solution for Backup Exec 12.5 was successfull (found on techrepublic)
...solution was to remove the remote PC from the Domain and Add it again.
IE. Change to workgroup from System Properties. Apply, reboot. Repeat process to add to the domain again...

Ca I stop TM from formatting external drive prior to backup?

I bought an external drive to backup my Mac and my Pc. It is formatted as Fat32, acceptable both to Mac and Pc.
When I tried to use Time Machine it asks to format the external drive -- which means it will be formatted for Mac only. Is there a way to force Time Machine to accept Fat32 and proceed with the backup?
If not, is there an easy to check list of files or folders that should be backed up manually?
Thankx. Roxy

You cannot use a FAT32 drive for a Time Machine backup destination. FAT32 doesn't support the required features that let Time Machine store multiple copies of files and directories in the way it does.
You have two basic options.
One is to format the disk as HFS+ (including partitioning the drive to have a separate Mac and a PC partition)
Two is to create a disk image on the FAT drive and use the disk image as your backup destination. As a disk image, the necessary file links work and are hidden from the FAT disk.
At no level, though, will the PC be able to read files directly from the Time Machine backup.

Stop Spotlight searching attached external drive

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