Hard drive search

[dazzer21]

This is driving me nuts. I have two identical iMacs (8,1). On one of them, the search features have gone South. When I type in what I am looking for, it returns what I can only describe as a 'loose' result - the files that are listed do contain the string I entered, but it appears that not ALL the files on the drive are listed. I can see that a particular file (or files) are on the hard drive and that the search didn't see it.

I've repaired the permissions and indexed the drive to no avail. What else can I do without having to clean install?

 

[GGJstudios]

This is driving me nuts. I have two identical iMacs (8,1). On one of them, the search features have gone South. When I type in what I am looking for, it returns what I can only describe as a 'loose' result - the files that are listed do contain the string I entered, but it appears that not ALL the files on the drive are listed. I can see that a particular file (or files) are on the hard drive and that the search didn't see it.

First, you'll have better success searching in Finder than in using the Menu Bar Spotlight search. Also, try re-indexing your drive: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

If that fails to index, enter the following command in Terminal:

sudo mdutil -i on "/Volumes/your drive name"​

I've repaired the permissions...

Permissions have nothing to do with searching.

 

[dazzer21]

Forgot to mention it's running 10.5.8. I usually search directly from the finder using Cmd-F rather than using the Spotlight option. I noticed last night though that the affected machine has a static dot in the middle of the Spotlight icon and the other Mac doesn't.

 

[GGJstudios]

Forgot to mention it's running 10.5.8. I usually search directly from the finder using Cmd-F rather than using the Spotlight option. I noticed last night though that the affected machine has a static dot in the middle of the Spotlight icon and the other Mac doesn't.

If a drive is constantly active or your CPU utilization is high (possibly with increased temps and fan speed) when you're not running any major apps, you can check to see if Spotlight is indexing by looking at the Menu Bar icon:

(not indexing)

(indexing) (pulsing dot)​

When it's indexing, you may also see increased CPU and RAM usage by the mds and mdworker processes in Activity Monitor.