Cannot Index a Drive in Monterey

Question

Cannot Index a Drive in Monterey

I noticed Spotlight is not indexing my main document drive even though it is not excluded in the spotlight privacy area.

Indexing and searching disabled.

/Volumes/MyDocs:

I have tried running terminal on it to force indexing but none of the commands override this restriction. It is an SSD drive and I was able to run First Aid on the Samsung volume, but it would not and could not unmount the drive MyDocs. So I cannot run first aid on the actual volume.

Someone has suggested editing /etc/hostconfig file but I can't find it. And a lot of the terminal commands i have tried no longer work in Monterey,

Any help greatly appreciated.

Posted on Apr 28, 2022 9:49 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 28, 2022 2:34 PM in response to Barney-15E

Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

sudo mdutil -E -i on /Volumes/MyDoc (which give the message searching and indexing disabled)

When I run first aid, I get this error

Unable to unmount volume for repair. : (-69673)

I also tried adding MyDoc to the privacy exclusion in Spotlight and then removing it.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,680 points

Apr 28, 2022 3:21 PM in response to Jefferis Peterson

Open a Finder window at the top level of the backup drive.

Type cmd-shift-.

That should show hidden files.

Find the .Spotlight-v100 folder and delete it. Empty Trash.

Attempt to add and remove from Spotlight Privacy pane (or use the same terminal command).

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Answer 3

Apr 28, 2022 6:58 PM in response to Barney-15E

thanks. No go. I found and deleted the hidden folders but they are still not searchable or indexable.

What is more, then I tried running this but it made things worse

sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*
sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -E /

Another drive is now no longer searchable or indexable.

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,680 points

Apr 29, 2022 3:18 AM in response to Jefferis Peterson

You deleted the index of the startup drive. That has nothing to do with other drive indexes.

My guess is you have something interfering with Spotlight’s indexing functions. Besides Anti-Virus software, I don’t know what that would be.

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Answer 5

Apr 29, 2022 12:37 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks I finally got control back with a PRAM reset.

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Answer 6

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,680 points

Apr 28, 2022 1:29 PM in response to Jefferis Peterson

How is the drive formatted?

So we don’t have to repeat, what terminal commands did you run?

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Answer 7

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,680 points

Apr 29, 2022 1:49 PM in response to Jefferis Peterson

I wouldn't have expected that. Thanks for the info.

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Cannot Index a Drive in Monterey

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