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User profile for user: danmitchell
danmitchell Author
User level: Level 1
19 points

Spotlight will not index external drive — but definitely not the "usual" simple issue

I have a OWC two-disk external firewire enclosure/hub that refuses to allow spotlight indexing.


I'm aware of and have tried to usual approaches to resolving this, ranging from the advice to turn spotlight indexing off/on via the Mac OS Preferences, to reformatting the drive, switching to different RAID/spanning modes for the drive, trying some recommended terminal tricks, looking for and deleting the folder that spotlight creates on the drive, and so forth.


Nothing resolves it. Otherwise the drive works fine, though things are obviously slower since finding files takes forever without Spotlight working. (Kind of defeats the whole purpose of the expensive Firewire enclosure, but I digress...)


I'm at a loss. Feel free to share the usual solutions, but don't be upset if I simply report that I did them already. Perhaps among the responses there will be something new that gets at the potential and apparently unusual source of the problem? (Other drives attached to this computer do not exhibit this issue.)

Posted on May 12, 2023 9:49 AM

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User profile for user: danmitchell
danmitchell Author
User level: Level 1
19 points

Posted on May 18, 2023 10:43 PM

Apparently this problem is a known issue — and it is not solved by the usual Apple-recommended strategies, all which I had tried. My drive vendor, after pointing out that this is an OS issue and not a problem with their drive, pointed me to an online discussion that included an actual solution. I've quoted it below and added one step that I added at the end.


And this DID fix the problem.


Here is the description that I found in the discussion provided by my vendor:


This may be "late to the party" but after two days of wrestling with this very same problem, I have - by luck or stubbornness - solved it here. Thanks go to jcscol and wfriedwald for their back-and-forth which gave me clues. Long story short...


I tried the Spotlight preferences "add volume to privacy list then remove it" trick many times, no luck.


Using ls -al /Volumes/(volume name) I discovered all my external volumes did have the following listing:


-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 Dec 10 2020 .metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs


I got rid of that file using sudo rm /Volumes/(volume name)/.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs


However, no amount of following that with sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/(volume name) or similar commands would work to reestablish indexing.


Once more, with the "offending" file removed, I tried Spotlight preferences - added the volumes to the Privacy list, then removed them. But then I completely shut down my iMac, waited a bit, then rebooted. I noticed a LOT of external drive activity (read-write head sounds) as the drives mounted.


I then went to Terminal and used mdutil -sa and VOILA, every volume came back "Indexing enabled." It appears that the problem needs a very specific sequence of steps to work - at least, that's how it fell out here. Hope this helps.


After doing the above I also found "indexing" enabled for the problem drive. However, it wasn't apparent that the indexing was taking place, so I added the following step to the process:


Addendum: Completing the above steps did reenable spotlight indexing on the drive, but it wasn't clear that the indexing was actually occurring. So after completing the above steps I then ran sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/(volume name) to index the drive.


Dan

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User profile for user: danmitchell
danmitchell Author
User level: Level 1
19 points

May 18, 2023 10:43 PM in response to HWTech

Apparently this problem is a known issue — and it is not solved by the usual Apple-recommended strategies, all which I had tried. My drive vendor, after pointing out that this is an OS issue and not a problem with their drive, pointed me to an online discussion that included an actual solution. I've quoted it below and added one step that I added at the end.


And this DID fix the problem.


Here is the description that I found in the discussion provided by my vendor:


This may be "late to the party" but after two days of wrestling with this very same problem, I have - by luck or stubbornness - solved it here. Thanks go to jcscol and wfriedwald for their back-and-forth which gave me clues. Long story short...


I tried the Spotlight preferences "add volume to privacy list then remove it" trick many times, no luck.


Using ls -al /Volumes/(volume name) I discovered all my external volumes did have the following listing:


-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 Dec 10 2020 .metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs


I got rid of that file using sudo rm /Volumes/(volume name)/.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs


However, no amount of following that with sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/(volume name) or similar commands would work to reestablish indexing.


Once more, with the "offending" file removed, I tried Spotlight preferences - added the volumes to the Privacy list, then removed them. But then I completely shut down my iMac, waited a bit, then rebooted. I noticed a LOT of external drive activity (read-write head sounds) as the drives mounted.


I then went to Terminal and used mdutil -sa and VOILA, every volume came back "Indexing enabled." It appears that the problem needs a very specific sequence of steps to work - at least, that's how it fell out here. Hope this helps.


After doing the above I also found "indexing" enabled for the problem drive. However, it wasn't apparent that the indexing was taking place, so I added the following step to the process:


Addendum: Completing the above steps did reenable spotlight indexing on the drive, but it wasn't clear that the indexing was actually occurring. So after completing the above steps I then ran sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/(volume name) to index the drive.


Dan

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User profile for user: etresoft
etresoft
User level: Level 9
50,680 points

May 15, 2023 4:37 PM in response to danmitchell

danmitchell wrote:

I have a OWC two-disk external firewire enclosure/hub

Can you be more specific? I have seen ....


Wait. I thought you said "Thunderbolt". You said "firewire". Later, you said it again. Can you clarify exactly what you are talking about? If this is really Firewire, then I strongly recommend upgrading to something more modern.


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User profile for user: Peace-Freak
Peace-Freak
User level: Level 2
178 points

Aug 26, 2023 11:05 PM in response to danmitchell

Dan,


Your fix worked for me. Thanks.


I could not work out how to list off the content on my external drive using the Terminal command as you suggested:

-al /Volumes/(volume name)


(Would be interested to know how to find the "correct" name.)


Anyway, I noticed the the file you mentioned (.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs) that was causing the problem was an invisible file (as its name started with a period), so I used Onyx to show the invisible files (in the Parameters/Finder section), found the culprit and deleted it. I then restarted and a little while later indexing started.


Thank you very much!

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Spotlight will not index external drive — but definitely not the "usual" simple issue

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