Spotlight - Indexing?!?

[MowingDevil]

I noticed my "spotlight" icon has a pulsing dot in the center of the magnifying glass icon....when I click on it there is a progress bar and it is perpetually "indexing" my hard drive.

Whats this mean? Is my HDD going to fail? Its been going on like this for months. Running Drive Utility, Techtool or Disk Warrior doesn't fix it.

I fixed permissions and repaired the disk off the Snow Leopard book disk, problem persists.

 

[Gav2k]

Should take a few hours and stop so something is up.

Open terminal and type..

sudo mdutil -E /

once this is done type,

sudo mdutil -i on /

this will erase the cache (first command) and restart the indexing (second command)

it's best to do this so it's left to run overnight when the machine is doing nothing.

Hope that helps

 

[Gregg2]

it is perpetually "indexing" my hard drive.

Whats this mean?

Are you asking for the definition of Indexing?

 

[MowingDevil]

Are you asking for the definition of Indexing?

No, wondering why it won't complete the task. Its not functional while its in this state.

Should take a few hours and stop so something is up.

Open terminal and type..

sudo mdutil -E /

once this is done type,

sudo mdutil -i on /

this will erase the cache (first command) and restart the indexing (second command)

it's best to do this so it's left to run overnight when the machine is doing nothing.

Hope that helps

I'll give that a shot, thanks.

 

[-aggie-]

No, wondering why it won't complete the task. Its not functional while its in this state.



I'll give that a shot, thanks.

I've wondered why mine never even starts. I've yet to see a pulsing dot.

 

[GGJstudios]

I've wondered why mine never even starts. I've yet to see a pulsing dot.

Do this and you will.

 

[-aggie-]

Do this and you will.

I did that when I was searching for solutions awhile back. Nothing happened.

 

[MowingDevil]

I tried the terminal code and no luck so far but I'll let it run overnight.

Interestingly enough, prior to trying this I noticed the flashing dot seems to come intermittently...if you catch it when its not flashing you can use spotlight....then for no reason it starts indexing again. Glad I have everything backed up but I have this eerie feeling the hard drive may fail. Weird. Anyone else have any idea what this could be and how to possibly fix this constant indexing?