How long does Indexing take???

[macdon401]

I have a G5 1.8 20" iMac running Tiger 10.4.2
768 MB RAM
I was getting beachballs like crazy after I installed trial versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign CS2, couldn't fugure it out till I found out the computer started "indexing", I didn't request or try and start it but it's still going!
I can only assume it is bringing these new applications up to date??
My question is how long does this take and should I stop all other activities while this is going on?
I have about 65 Gigs of stuff on my drive.
I could find no information in the "help" online , so please can anyone help??
Thank you
R

 

[Heb1228]

Do you mean Spotlight is indexing? I'm not sure what other kind of indexing would be going on. If thats what it is, it should only take an hour or two at th emost, and its fine to do other things.

 

[FredAkbar]

The really long indexing process only occurs the first time you run Tiger, and even that shouldn't be more than 30 minutes to an hour with an iMac G5. Indexing after installing just a few apps shouldn't take anywhere near as long.

 

[macdon401]

Do you mean Spotlight is indexing? I'm not sure what other kind of indexing would be going on. If thats what it is, it should only take an hour or two at th emost, and its fine to do other things.

Yes thats what i was refering to Spotlight is indexing ...but it is still going on...
4 hours now, it says it is calculating the time in the bottom of the Spotlight window, and just a few minutes ago it said 2213 hrs remaining???
Whats that???

 

[Heb1228]

Yeah that does sound strange. Try logging out and logging back in and if that doesn't work, restart the computer. It should have been done a long time ago.

 

[macdon401]

Yeah that does sound strange. Try logging out and logging back in and if that doesn't work, restart the computer. It should have been done a long time ago.

well, I've restarted, logged out and back in, shut down and it's still "indexing"
any other suggestions ...anyone... ????
R

 

[Heb1228]

After mounting an external FireWire volume onto my desktop, I noticed the Spotlight icon in the right uppermost corner of my screen pulsing. Upon clicking on the icon, it told me that it was indexing the drives.

Following the indexing process' completion, I began using Spotlight to search for content on the drives. To my dismay, many files were missing. This included media, system, and other files and folders. The only way to get Spotlight to show them was to either open or edit each missing file/folder.

After studying resources around the web, I discovered that every volume contains its own Spotlight index (making perfect sense). Through closer inspection, each drive contains a file in its root named .Spotlight-V100. This is that index file.

If this file is removed from the root, and the drive is ejected and mounted, Spotlight will once again index the offending drive, creating a new .Spotlight-V100 file. This was able to fix my missing file/folder hiccup. Enjoy.
R

Here's the link to the article:http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050424201429961

Maybe the spotlight index file has gotten corrupted somehow. You may also want to try booting from your OS X CD and doing a Repair Disk from disk utility.