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Lion: Spotlight-Search fails on (external) NTFS-Device (Harddisk)

R

robbybubble

Guest
Original poster
Hello,

does anybody know, why Spotlight-Search does not work on NTFS-formated devices? Of course on OSX Snow Leopard it worked fine, but since I updated on Lion, I cannot find any file via Spotlight on the device. That is very frustrating because it was still updated to 10.7.3 and the problem is not fixed yet. 😡

There are many threads in different forums, but I cannot find any solution! Why is there a change between an older (SL) and a newer (Lion) OS? What is the purpose? I do not understand that!

I need NTFS because I want to work with both systems, Windows and OSX. I have installed the Paragon NTFS Driver and as I already said, it has worked fine until I changed to Lion.

All known Terminal-Commands (Re-Indexing, ...) did not work...PLEASE HELP! It would be great if anybody can help me solving this issue. I think many more users related to this problem will thank you too.

Bye



Some related threads:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15857610#15857610

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15763748#15763748
 
I am still using an older version (8.0.0) of Paragon NTFS Driver (the version, which was preinstalled on a Seagate GoFlex Pro harddrive) BUT I have read that also the newest version does not fix this issue. You can look it up here:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15763748#15763748

Of course I have tried Re-Indexing the normal way but that also does not solve the problem. I think it is logical because there is the same done as I did it with the commands in the Terminal.
 
Maybe re-creation under SL helps

It may be that Apple has decided not to support Spotlight indexing on non-HFS volumes due to performance reasons.
Wasn't there just last week an article about something like that - Spotlight partially being disabled because of performance issues? Hmm, not sure.

Anyway, here's an idea: If you can, boot into SL and have the index recreated there. Then see if it's still available in Lion, even if it doesn't get updated any more.

OTOH - what do you need Spotlight mainly for? If you only want to search for file names, not content, get EasyFind (free) or my Find Any File ("FAF") (not free but, well, check it out). Unfortunately, Paragon doesn't support "CatalogSearch" (although they could as NTFS's layout is similar to HFS's in this regard), so searches will be slow.

Say, is there a ".fsevents" folder at the root of the NTFS volume under Lion? I'm running SL here atm so I can't check. If there isn't then that's probably the cause why Spotlight doesn't work. On SL, though, that folder is still there. To check, use Terminal, with the "ls -la /Volumes/*" command to see all root items of all your volumes, including hidden ones).

Also, I wonder if Spotlight can be tricked into scanning these vols on Lion. There's two parts to it: The tool that scans new files are they got updated (which is managed by the "fsevents" OS technology) and the database. I wonder if one can get the database updated without relying on the fsevents activation model. Either with a little program that invokes the scan program explicitly, or by fooling the system in other ways.

If I had the time, I'd look into this myself. But I've got a deadline to meet for a big improvement of my FAF app.
 
Fixed it

This worked for me:

Go to Applications - Utilities - Terminal

Type in:

/usr/bin/mdutil -i on /Volumes/NTFS_DRIVE
(Enter)
/usr/bin/mdimport /Volumes/NTFS_DRIVE
(Enter)

Where NTFS_DRIVE is the name of your NTFS external drive. Put quotes before and after the drive name if your drive name has spaces in it.
 
Dracos said:
This worked for me:

Go to Applications - Utilities - Terminal

Type in:

/usr/bin/mdutil -i on /Volumes/NTFS_DRIVE
(Enter)
/usr/bin/mdimport /Volumes/NTFS_DRIVE
(Enter)

Where NTFS_DRIVE is the name of your NTFS external drive. Put quotes before and after the drive name if your drive name has spaces in it.
Click to expand...

i confirm this works.....i checked an external drive
 
Dracos said:
This worked for me:

Go to Applications - Utilities - Terminal

Type in:

/usr/bin/mdutil -i on /Volumes/NTFS_DRIVE
(Enter)
/usr/bin/mdimport /Volumes/NTFS_DRIVE
(Enter)

Where NTFS_DRIVE is the name of your NTFS external drive. Put quotes before and after the drive name if your drive name has spaces in it.
Click to expand...

Great! Finally some thing that works!

I'm using Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and Paragon NTFS v.10.0.1 - this is the only working solution I found so far ( you can check your NTFS volume in Disk Utility as well)!

1K Thanks for this inside!
 
Yes it worked 🙂

Thanksssssss :d


dracos said:
this worked for me:

Go to applications - utilities - terminal

type in:

/usr/bin/mdutil -i on /volumes/ntfs_drive
(enter)
/usr/bin/mdimport /volumes/ntfs_drive
(enter)

where ntfs_drive is the name of your ntfs external drive. Put quotes before and after the drive name if your drive name has spaces in it.
Click to expand...
 
freeze problem

sorry but could u know how to cancel that command coz after sometime indexing it freezes my laptop totally so now i can't plug my external HD at all 🙁

Dracos said:
This worked for me:

Go to Applications - Utilities - Terminal

Type in:

/usr/bin/mdutil -i on /Volumes/NTFS_DRIVE
(Enter)
/usr/bin/mdimport /Volumes/NTFS_DRIVE
(Enter)

Where NTFS_DRIVE is the name of your NTFS external drive. Put quotes before and after the drive name if your drive name has spaces in it.
Click to expand...
 
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