Unable to add external volumes to Spotlight's privacy

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Level 2

423 points

Unable to add external volumes to Spotlight's privacy

Still on 11.6.1 (waiting for first full decimal increment update of Monterey).

When trying to add (some but not all) external (backup/clone) volumes to Spotlight's Privacy tab to prevent it indexing them I get an error - when I drag, use '+' etc:

Privacy List Error The item couldn’t be added or removed because of an unknown error.

Have experimented with mdutil to no avail… get indexing errors etc.

The external (APFS-formatted) drives affected all pass Disk First Aid.

Is there any easy way to fix this, please?

TIA!

iMac 27″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Dec 6, 2021 11:06 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,246 points

Dec 6, 2021 8:13 PM in response to Mark Sealey

You could try deleting the .Spotlight-v100 folder from the drives. You can show hidden folders with cmd-shift-.

That shortcut may not work on some keyboard layouts.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,246 points

Dec 7, 2021 7:37 PM in response to Mark Sealey

Same place as every other OS version that has had Spotlight, at the root level of the drive being indexed.

So, for your external it will be at /Volumes/drivename/.Spotlight-v100

Now, going back to the original question, I hadn't noticed you mentioned "backup." If it is a Time Machine backup, then you cannot alter the Spotlight status.

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Answer 3

Mark Sealey Author

Level 2

423 points

Dec 12, 2021 4:27 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanking you again, @Barney-15E, I can report that nothing I did with mdutil etc worked.

So I quite happily reformatted the two errant drives, gained a lot of extra space from CCC's Safety Net and now have everything working properly.

Your suggestions appreciated :-)

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,246 points

Dec 8, 2021 2:36 PM in response to Mark Sealey

If you still get that without the folder, there is something else going on. I ran into a similar thing with an external and deleting that folder allowed me to start indexing.

You can try enabling it in Terminal:

sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/drivename

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Answer 5

Mark Sealey Author

Level 2

423 points

Dec 8, 2021 12:01 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thank you very much, Barney.

I used the Terminal to remove the contents (one file and one empty subdirectory) of the .Spotlight-v100 directory on one of the two external volumes (no - not a Time Machine volume… I noticed how much more closely integrated TM is with Spotlight since Catalina). Although I was not root, no errors resulted from this operation.

Unfortunately this is still what I get:

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Answer 6

Mark Sealey Author

Level 2

423 points

Dec 8, 2021 3:36 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks again, @Barney-15E

This is odd, isn't it!

I tried all these operations (as root) and still get the error… cannot add the volume to Privacy…

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/name

root# mdutil -i off /Volumes/name

/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/name:

Error: unable to perform operation. (-400)

Error: unknown indexing state.

sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/name

mdutil -E /Volumes/name

/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/name:

Error: unknown indexing state.

sudo mdutil -X /Volumes/name

mdutil -X /Volumes/name

461 files/directories removed

mdutil -i on /Volumes/name

/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/name:

Error: unable to perform operation. (-400)

Error: unknown indexing state.

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Answer 7

Mark Sealey Author

Level 2

423 points

Dec 7, 2021 10:23 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks, @Barney-15E; I have read about that file.

Where exactly is it, please, on Big Sur?

TIA!

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Unable to add external volumes to Spotlight's privacy

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