Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

lammy1961

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 22, 2014
35
0
I have a couple of external hard drives attached to my Mac, but one of them constantly indexes, usually not stating for how long, when I drag it into the Spotlight/Privacy window to stop it then remove it to allow indexing it resumes usually stating ho long is remaining.

My question is why does Spotlight randomly index this external hard drive.

Thanks....As always.
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,228
42,957
I can't say why, but you can exclude them from being indexed.
spotlight_exclude.png
 

MacTCE

macrumors 6502
Dec 20, 2013
487
20
Raleigh NC
I have a couple of external hard drives attached to my Mac, but one of them constantly indexes, usually not stating for how long, when I drag it into the Spotlight/Privacy window to stop it then remove it to allow indexing it resumes usually stating ho long is remaining.

My question is why does Spotlight randomly index this external hard drive.

Thanks....As always.

What kind of data do you have stored on that drive?
 

lammy1961

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 22, 2014
35
0
Thanks for the replies.
I use it mainly to download NZB files onto, before I transfer them to my Popcorn Hour.
So it gets used a good bit every day.
What if I exclude just the download folder from the drive in question, as shown below.....Might that help.

ScreenShot2014-05-01at232136.png
 
Last edited:

ssls6

macrumors 6502a
Feb 7, 2013
592
185
I have a couple of external hard drives attached to my Mac, but one of them constantly indexes, usually not stating for how long, when I drag it into the Spotlight/Privacy window to stop it then remove it to allow indexing it resumes usually stating ho long is remaining.

My question is why does Spotlight randomly index this external hard drive.

Thanks....As always.

You can do this

sudo touch /Volumes/your_external_drive_name/.metadata_never_index
 

lammy1961

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 22, 2014
35
0
Thanks for the replies, but I still want to use Spotlight to search....Just not to index it all the time.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.