Spotlight can't find files on external drive — appears unable to index it.

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Level 1

22 points

Spotlight can't find files on external drive — appears unable to index it.

Since I got a new external drive (OWC two-disk drive on most current Thunderbolt) Spotlight seems like it will not index the drive. When I use the "Find" function from the Finder or from file dialog boxes in other applications the computer successfully searches its internal SSD but does not see files on the external drive.

I know about the steps to rebuild the Spotlight directory using the Spotlight preferences panel. (Remove the drive from the list and then add it back in.) I've tried this with the external drive — several times — and it still does not seem to include it in Spotlight searches. (This is true even days or weeks after I take the steps to trigger Spotlight to index the drive, so it isn't that I'm not waiting long enough.)

So far web searches have not turned up any advice besides the numerous iterations of the standard advice about how to supposedly get Spotlight to rebuild its database for a drive... which has no effect.

I'd be grateful for some help on this one. Finding things manually on a 16TB drive can be, uh, "tedious..."

Dan

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Oct 11, 2020 10:20 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

123,620 points

Oct 19, 2020 2:59 PM in response to danmitchell

I don’t know if you’ll need to disable SIP, but try to delete the .Spotlight-v100 folder from the root level of the drive, then try to reindex it.

The “no-index” information is stored in that folder.

You may also be able to prevent indexing by adding .noindex to the file/folder name. I thought there was a way to just add a .noindex file to the folder to prevent the folder from being indexed, but I couldn’t find anything. If you see a file named like that in the root directory, try deleting that too.

Youll need to show hidden files by typing

cmd-shift-.

Or, use Terminal, if you know how.

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

217,136 points

Oct 17, 2020 4:14 PM in response to danmitchell

How is the drive formatted? There have been other topics where Thunderbolt drives had problems. Can you also connect it via a USB 3 cable to see if it performs any more stable?

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

123,620 points

Oct 12, 2020 5:23 AM in response to danmitchell

So far web searches have not turned up any advice besides the numerous iterations of the standard advice about how to supposedly get Spotlight to rebuild its database for a drive... which has no effect.

If you mean you ran the commands in Terminal that should enable indexing on that Volume, then all I can suggest is contact OWC.

Also, make sure you are searching on that drive. I don't think "This Mac" includes the external drives.

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Answer 4

danmitchell Author

Level 1

22 points

Oct 12, 2020 11:05 AM in response to Barney-15E

I did not run any terminal commands. I would be grateful for any links to such commands that might have an effect that the non-terminal solution is not having.

To clarify, what I did, as per advice from Apple and many other sources online was:

Launch System Preferences and go to the Spotlight preference panel.
Click the "Privacy" tab.
Add the affected drive to the list. (Did this more than once, using both the drag-and-drop method and the "+" button method.
Use the "-" button to remove the added drive from the list, which is supposed to force Spotlight to reindex.

Tried this several times over a period of a month or so, and even after a period of weeks to reindex, no go.

I'll check back for your links to terminal commands.

Thanks.

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Answer 5

danmitchell Author

Level 1

22 points

Oct 12, 2020 11:08 AM in response to Barney-15E

Regarding: "Also, make sure you are searching on that drive. I don't think "This Mac" includes the external drives."

To clarify, I did the Finder based search after selecting the problematic external drive in the Finder window and then selecting it by name (instead of "this Mac") to the right of the "Search:" text near the top of the window.

So I don't think that's the issue.

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Answer 6

danmitchell Author

Level 1

22 points

Oct 17, 2020 3:41 PM in response to Barney-15E

I did contact OWC, and we spent considerable time on this, with the first representative I spoke to ending up consulting with others at OWC.

They had no explanation and the only advice they could give was to delete the drive, reformat, and rebuild from a backup, which "might help."

I tried a bunch of terminal stuff I found here and there on the web, and it seems to be telling me that Spotlight searching has been disabled or blocked on that drive. However, so far I'm unable to find any commands to rectify this.

Help?

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Answer 7

danmitchell Author

Level 1

22 points

Oct 19, 2020 2:40 PM in response to Old Toad

It was formatted as APFS using Disk Utility.

It is purely a Thunderbolt 3 drive enclosure, so there is no way to connect it via another system. It is directly attached to the Mac's Thunderbolt 3 port.

I don't think it is a problem with "stability." For some reason the drive seems to be set to disallow Spotlight indexing even though there is nothing in the preference panel to indicate that, and I've used the Apple process that is supposed to trigger a reindexing of the drive.

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Spotlight can't find files on external drive — appears unable to index it.

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