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Spotlight Indexing External USB Drive?

How can I instruct Spotlight to not start indexing an external drive at the instant the drive is connected?

I know that I can go to System Preference | Spotlight | Privacy and drag the drive to the list of excluded items. But how can I do this before the drive is actually connected?

Is it possible to totally disable Spotlight while the external drive is connected?

Intel Core 2 Duo iMac 24/2.8/2GB/500GB/SD, Mac OS X (10.5.6), HP C7280, WD MyBook x 2, SuperDuper!, APC RS1500

Posted on Jan 3, 2009 4:43 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jan 4, 2009 12:04 AM

Mount the HD, launch the Terminal app, copy and paste this command into its window, hit the space bar, drag the HD's Desktop icon into the Terminal window, hit the return key, enter your admin password, carefully because nothing will show up on the screen, and hit the return key:

*sudo mdutil -i off*

As an example, if the ext HD's name was Freddy, the command would look like this:

+*sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/Freddy*+

Next, run this command (using the same example, so substitute the HD's actual name):

*sudo mdutil -s /Volumes/Freddy*

which should return:

/Volumes/Freddy:
+Indexing and searching disabled.+

Quit the Terminal app.
6 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jan 4, 2009 12:04 AM in response to nkh

Mount the HD, launch the Terminal app, copy and paste this command into its window, hit the space bar, drag the HD's Desktop icon into the Terminal window, hit the return key, enter your admin password, carefully because nothing will show up on the screen, and hit the return key:

*sudo mdutil -i off*

As an example, if the ext HD's name was Freddy, the command would look like this:

+*sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/Freddy*+

Next, run this command (using the same example, so substitute the HD's actual name):

*sudo mdutil -s /Volumes/Freddy*

which should return:

/Volumes/Freddy:
+Indexing and searching disabled.+

Quit the Terminal app.

Jan 4, 2009 1:02 AM in response to i.3d

That retains the setting on the current boot volume using that HD and its asscociated volumes. However, if you boot with another volume, you'll have to repeat your steps. My solution stores that data on the ext HD's volumes (assuming that you apply it to each one) and will work with any boot volume. Some of us have multiple boot volumes and ext HDs and find my solution is a better one, even if it does involve using the built-in command line tools, which some find intimidating and somewhat frightening.

Spotlight Indexing External USB Drive?

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