Spotlight keeps re-indexing an external drive

[denzil71]

I have seen this about 3 times now:

after leopard install, spotlight indexed my local drive and my external usb.

As I use an mbp, I dont always have the external drive connected. I noticed, that after disconnecting the drive for a couple of hours and then reconnected it later, spotlight started re-indexing the external drive. The same thing has happened today, so this is the 3rd time this external drive has now been indexed This never happened under tiger

 

[elbows]

Yes Ive noticed this too but I dont think its doing a full reindex, its possible it is checking the drive to see if there is anything new since it was last connected?

 

[lord patton]

or, did it ever complete the first index? If not, it will start chugging away when you hook it up again.

FYI, you can tell Spotlight not to index any particular volume in System Preferences. Unfortunately, this has to be done on a per drive basis—there is no command to ignore all external drives.

 

[elbows]

Well for me Im sure it completed the index the first time, because it took hours and I could hear it, and when it had finished I was overjoyed by how fast Leopard is on my machine

I think I'll leave spotlight enabled for the external drive as it is only a minor inconvenience and I think spotlight is generally mature and useful now