Got External Hard Drive - Does Spotlight Index it?

[powerbook911]

I got an external hard drive today. Does Spotlight index it? I get search results from it, but a lot slower than things on my regular drive I mean a lot slower. Also, my system seems a bit slower after adding the external drive.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[iMeowbot]

Did you format the new drive as HFS+? Some of these things come preformatted as FAT volumes, which will kind of work with Spotlight but only with much pain.

[zephead]

It indexed my flash drive, so I would imagine it would index your external HD.

[powerbook911]

Yeah I used the same file format as Macs come with, so it should eventually be indexed I guess, or hope? ha-ha.

Any idea how long it will take until it starts to be able to know these items on the external drive quickly?

Thanks for the help.

[iMeowbot]

Okay, if you picked the Mac OS format, you'll be avoiding the silly reindex-every-time FAT thing.

You'll know that the indexing is pretty much good to go once the drive stops crunching away nonstop, and there is no pulsing dot in the Spotlight menu icon.

I'm not sure what your expectations are for speed. If you were hoping for instant results, forget that. It doesn't take a very long time, but it does take some time to fill in the search results if you have multiple drives to check.

[powerbook911]

Okay, if you picked the Mac OS format, you'll be avoiding the silly reindex-every-time FAT thing.

You'll know that the indexing is pretty much good to go once the drive stops crunching away nonstop, and there is no pulsing dot in the Spotlight menu icon.

I'm not sure what your expectations are for speed. If you were hoping for instant results, forget that. It doesn't take a very long time, but it does take some time to fill in the search results if you have multiple drives to check.

Thanks. It's taking 8 seconds, for things that are on my external drive. That is just the normal thing to expect then? It's not a huge issue, since the items on the external are less relevant, but I wanted to make sure everything is working as it should.

[iMeowbot]

Yeah, 8 seconds is on the better side of typical.

The Finder's interface into Spotlight (apple-F) lefts you choose what drives to search, which could help speed things if you have a whole bunch of digging to do.