Whenever I add a new external drive (be it for regular use or just backup) the OS will read the entire drive to create an index. With smaller drives this was just an irritation of 20-30minutes ..but now I have a RAID5 with 4 2TB drives. This will be 4-5hours of non stop noise ?
Is there a better way to do this on a schedule ..say use the drive now and then set it for indexing over night ?
right, i have a HFS formatted 500gb external drive which i use everyday, but today spotlight just keeps indexing it, it has a lot of media on it which i access daily so spotlight is needed to search it.
i mean its been indexing for a good 2 hours.
I have an iomega network drive on which I store my itunes library. However spotlight does not find any files on this drive.
I have tried mdutil -i on /Volumes/Network drive and mdutil -E
It says it has turned on indexing, but it still will not find any files. Does anyone know how to make spotlight index this network drive, or recommend an app that will allow me to search network drives
I upgraded my harddrive this weekend. Here is how I did it:
1.) replaced the hard drive in my laptop
2.) Loaded Leopard onto the new hard drive
3.) Connected my old drive in an enclosure as an external drive
4.) Used the migration assistant to migrate my profile and files from the old drive.
Everything is good, but spotlight doesn't work well. It misses tons of stuff that IS there. I think the drive needs to be re-indexed?
I just added a 1 Terabyte drive for both backup and regular file storage. I partioned the drive so I would have a volume purely for backup. Backing up to the drive was taking forever, i searched and found index is the problem. I also found a couple ways to stop indexing. I utilized the touch function, but the .metadata_never_index doesn't seem to take at all. I have since utilized the sudo mdutil function for just the backup volume and this works. However..... Will this permanently leave indexing off on this volume? The drive backs up my laptop so it's disconnected frequently. Also does anyone have a guess to why the never index function didn't work? The syntax looked to be perfect.
touch /Volumes/Obsidianice Backup/.metadata_never_index
Whenever i ran the ls function
ls -a /Volumes/Obsidianice Backup
to check it it returned
No such file or directory
I have a MBP and I recently did a clean install up to Snow Leopard, and then added all of my movies and files about 150GBs onto my mac. And it was all working perfectly, but now for the past two days I have not been able to use Spotlight as it says it is indexing.
Any ideas why or how this might of happened? I have recently brought iDeFrag and did a quick online DeFrag after I installed windows 7 in boot camp.
I use spotlight alot for finding files and not having it is.
My Spotlight doesn't seem to be working properly. It has been indexing for the past couple of weeks and is clearly stuck. It actually says that it is 'estimating indexing time' but hasn't been able to move on from this.
Time Machine has also stopped backing up, and I think that this may be a linked issue.
I'm running 10.6.4 on a MacBook Intel 2.4GHz with 2G RAM
So in Windows, if you were to disable Windows Indexing for search (but leave search on), you'll still be able to search for files, just at a extremely slower rate because theres no index available. Having an SSD, this is faster and I like that feature but in OSX, I can't figure out if there's anything to disable indexing but still have spotlight be able to find/search for files.
It's not being done out of paranoia or such, but for some reason, MDS always goes off whenever the system is started, any minor file is changed and such, it's actually being a huge drain on system resources. The MDS runs for about 10 minutes each time, taking up 30-70% cpu usually and i really want to disable it but still have spotlight searching available.
Can this be done? or is something that only windows' would have?
I have had my iMac for months now. However, recently, it's started displaying the blinking dot inside Spotlight.
When I hover over it, all it says (!!!) is "Indexing Volumes". No useful information about "what volume", why it's taking so long (7 hours so far), etc.. If I click the hour glass, spotlight works as always. Does anyone have any ideas what's going on here or what I might try to "fix" this problem. Currently, I'm doing the (Windows) reboot method to clear this "Indexing Volumes", but it comes back.
Should I let the machine run overnight?
a few weeks ago I used a maitenance software (like onyx). I changed something in the spotlight settings, which made it indexing... without stopping.
I have now reinstalled Mac OS X.. everything worked ok. I then updated it... and the problem popped up again.
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.
how can I tell if spotlight has indexed main hd? Also, does it index my 2 external hds; one is a Maxtor 1 teribyte hd-other is a 500g.
OSX.5.6-Macpro Work station-320g hd-2.8 ghz-10gig ram.----------
Dickster------------
I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my internal HD to my External 3 times a week. I have CCC set to erase the external, and copy everything over each time it backs up. The only problem im having is I can't stop Spotlight from indexing/searching my external drive. Adding the drive to the Privacy tab in the Spotlight Prefs works, but only until the next backup, after the next backup, and a restart Spotlight indexes my External drive again. It's annoying cause when I search for files I get 2 of everything. How the heck do I stop spotlight from searching my external?
View 16 Replies View RelatedSince I upgrade to Lion my external drives are not been indexed. I can't search anything there.Â
I already tryed:Â
mdutil -i on /Volume/NameOfExternalDriveÂ
andÂ
Add and remove my external drive from Spotlight Privacy tabÂ
Looks like indexing is active but I can find just a few files. Â
There are a way to force Lion to re-indexing thet drive? Better: without use terminal?
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I am unable to find any results in spot light search from my external hard disk. is there any way to index the files on my external hard disk?Â
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I wondering if anyone knows of a problem that will index my external hard drive and burned DVDs so that I can search/browse their contents even when I don't have them mounted on my Mac. I'm in the process of archive a lot of old work and I know at one point I saw a program that would index CDs and DVDs, but I can't remember the name and searching hasn't turned anything up yet.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI'm using a my book western digital nas drive for my time machine backups and time machine has been stuck on indexing for days. I saw some solutions in other threads, however on the my book the backup partition of the drive is private, locked, or hidden? and I have no idea how to get into that area of the drive if I was going to apply any of the solution I have previously seen...
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I have a 15" MB Pro, 2.66, 8gb ram, Intel Core i7 processor, OS 10.6.8, a year or so old. I'm having trouble with a Lacie d2 Quadra v3 7200rpm drive. At first I thot it was the drive but now believe it's something with the mac since when hooked up to my old MB Pro I don't have this problem. When copying from the Lacie to another drive and sometimes when unmounting I get a message saying it can't unmount because it is in use by another application. But I am not running any other application, at least not knowlingly.
I would guess that a program(s) is accessing the drive without my knowledge (and perhaps performing indexing operations?) and I would like to find out which program(s), and how I can stop it. When I go to Preferences>Accounts>Login Items I see VMWare Fusion Helper (unchecked), and iTunesHelper and CNQL2405_Button Manager (both checked). Could any of these be responsible? I wonder if iTunes being used to backup my iPhone has created a problem, or separately if iCloud, Life or iSync or another app that could index might be creating issues.
My iMac is slowing down and I wanted to upgrade the RAM and upgrade to Snow Leopard from Tiger. Here are the specs:
Version 10.4.11
Processor: 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 1GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
I want to back it up before I upgrade to Snow Leopard. What external hard drive do you recommend? The only things that I want to put on it are my pictures from iPhoto and music from iTunes. I have 12GBs of music and 1,109 pictures in iPhoto. Also, how do I go about getting these things onto the external hard drive? Will it mount on the desktop and then I just drag my files into it?
I have an LG 16x external drive. Will this work with the MBA for tasks such as installing system software? For that matter, apart from unpowered dvd drives, what else does not work with the MBA's USB port.
View 10 Replies View RelatedOK, I read about formatting Fat 32 to transfer files. I will try it tomorrow. My other question has to do with using this for backup. it is a 750 hard drive and I was wondering if I should do anything special if I want to use it for both Timeline and video storage separate from timeline.
View 2 Replies View Relatedwhich external hard drive (for backup purposes) or empty hard drive enclosure (so I can buy my own drive and install) to get for an iMac, which meets the following criteria:
- has Firewire 800 (or Firewire 800 and USB 2)
- stylish to look at (preferably matches the current iMac)
- has a good quality, reliable hard drive (no cheapo Maxtor drive or whatever)
- preferably is bus-powered (saves yet another wall-wart and power cable)
If it comes with a drive mechanism it should be around 400 to 500 GB.
I cannot get my liye-on external dvd drive to recogonize on my imac. Please let me know if there ary any fixes or ways to get this to work.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I am having a heck of a time trying to get either a brand new Lacie d2 Quadra OR a G-Tech G-Drive (both 2TB desktop models) to work on my iMac via the Firewire port. Mac is running 10.7.3, 2.8ghz Intel Core Duo. Â
Both drives are brand new out of the box. Â
When I connected them using Firewire they look like they mount, but they are unusable. They won't unmount if I try to reformat. Get error messages if I try to reformat, verify or disk repair. Messages say something about not being able to read some information. Keep in mind there's nothing on the drives. I have tried getting them to work with Time Machine with no luck. A few times it would backup for several hours only to give an error message and crash. Something is clearly wrong when I use Firewire. Â
But when I connect using USB? Voila! No problems at all. Repair, formatting, storage, etc. all work fine. Â
What the heck is it with Firewire? I am dealing with slow transfer speeds for now, but I'd really like to have them connected via Firewire and off my USB ports. Â
I have zapped the PRAM and permission module to no avail. Not sure what else can be done. Â
ive just got my mac book pro and was wanting to transfer all my music from my Windows Laptop, i have a Toshiba Stor.e Canvio 500gb which i have put allof my music onto i plugged it into my macbook via usb and nothing seems to happen the mac doesnt show any sign of the HD what so ever, is there anyway i can get this to work ??
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
I was wondering how much external memory an iMac G3 1999 will accept! And I'm looking for an external Hard Drive that uses the built in Firewire 400.
btw: it's blueberry. and 400MHz with 512MB SDRam
I need advice on purchasing an external drive for back up purposes. I just got a 15" MBP 2.8 500GB after getting some great advice from the group. I currently have a WD My Book Studio 1TB, which I purchased after a WD drive appeared to loose my information. In addition, I had a lacie drive that died several years ago, so I am not so confident in the external drives, so I want a secondary drive for the extra security. I went to purchase the same WD drive I got a few months ago, but learned that it no longer is sold because the drives have been updated, and not for the better.
Ideally I would love to get a small drive that is 1TB that I can keep in a safe box, in case of the unexpected. I haven't been able to find any smaller portable drives that are 1TB and the 1 WD I found seems to be a no no. Something stable and reliable would be great. I am planning to begin using TM for backups.
I'm praying someone can give me a miracle cure here but im pretty sure its a terminal case. i have a 24inch iMac 2.66ghz core 2 duo and a western digital 1tb external usb hard drive....this hard drive was bought a month or so ago with the sole purpose of store years and years of media to free up valuable space on my iMac hard drive....tonight without any warning at all the drive icon disappears from my desktop with an error message and now refuses to load, when i click initialise on the error dialogue box it takes me to disk utility.
in disk utility i have tried repairing disk and i get the message "invalid node structure". it then tells me it cannot be repaired and i need to re-format my hard drive.
as i said there is literally YEARS of info on this drive that i really really dont want to lose, is there anything i can do, or anything worth trying. as a side note on the front of the drive it has a capacity gauge and has gone from 3/4's full to not showing anything.
My backup external hard drive hasn't work since I installed Snow Leopard. Bad:(Â I am still learning about my MAC and would just like to re-format the hard dive and set everything up again. I want to upgrade to Lion but can't untill I backup what I.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I am looking to buy an external hard drive for my intel Mac and MacBook Pro to download and save some 8,000 plus photos. My computers only have USB 2 connections. I am finding that most new external hard drives have USB 3 connections. Can I use an external hard drive with a USB 3 connection on my older Mac computers? If so do I need an adapter to connect USB 3 to USB 2?
View 1 Replies View Related