Unable to search network drives with Lion...

I agree, all the solutions (spotlight indexing and easyfind) are workarounds and are not really satisfying.

After skipping Lion, due to many bugs and problems, I was really happy with Mountain Lion in the beginning, but this bug is really annoying in a company it enviroment.

Feels like a car without a horn... 🙂

Well said! I can't even recommend a new Mac for business. How do I tell people, It's the best computer I have ever used, it just can't search your Network or NAS. It looks like Mavericks is having issues just connecting, let alone searching.

It seems to work but only partially. I can find files and folders in the root directory of my NAS drive. But it will not search within subfolders. Have no idea why. It's absurd that Mavericks has not resolved this issue. Inexcusable, really.

The search works again! I've put together a new file server running Ubuntu 13.10 with samba 3.6.18. The client is OS X 10.8.5. No problem to search the Linux shared drive connected using Finder.

An older file server from Synology which uses samba 3.6.2 works too, but it has to be connected via Finder->Go->Connect to Server and then "cifs://server" (somebody was already suggesting that here). It does not work as nicely as the new file server though. Finder shows even a spinning wheel in the corner of its window indicating that it is still searching when connected to the new file server. It does not appear on the older server.

Both servers use SMB2 so I do not know where exactly is the difference, but the bottom line is the new samba server works perfectly fine with Mac's file sharing 🙂

P.S.: I managed to get going also Timemachine on the new Ubuntu server. Works beautifully and no need of tweaks on the OS X client. One can select even an icon that appears in Finder for that device 😎

LostAccount wrote:

For the time being, you may want to try:

sudo mdutil -i off (the path to your NAS drive)

You can leave a space after the word 'off ' and then drag and drop the NAS drive icon into the terminal window to complete the path for you.

Then run:

sudo mdutil -i on (the path to your NAS drive)

I will be happy to help in anyway I can and I hope this helps.

Kind Regards

This solved my problem. I believe my problem was I installed OS X Server and set up some VPN shared folders.... messed with permissions and index.

Neither of these solved my problem. The network drive (when indexing is force enabled with mdutil) will continually attempt to index, but never complete. I let it try for a couple of weeks straight before giving up. I have tried the add and remove from spotlight version as well, to no avail.

It used to work perfectly on 10.4 :/ My workflow is completely messed up now and I have to resort to going outside of the program I'm using to a third party search program (easyfind) instead of searching within the dialog boxes for open/place/etc.

The new SMB protocol just isn't working properly.

I found something which has dramaticaly speeded up my network and helped with spotlight search as well. It's not a solution for all, but it maybe helps. Try to get rid off IPv6 on all sides, especially if your shares run under Windows. I switched it off in the ethernet adapter preferencies. It boosted up all shares under Finder and helped me to search files more fluently. Tested on Maverics, disks shared from Windows 7 through CIFS.

At any given point, there's probably 50-70 people using the drives I would need to re-index. This does not work for me. I finally gave up and installed Easy Find. It's not ideal, but at least it's giving me results.

I have Mac os versions 10.9.2 and external NAS - WD MyCloud.

I face a similar problem, namely:

1. NAS it is constantly disconnected from system, it is necessary to remount a necessary external folder manually

2. Spotlight does not look for data on NAS. Forced start of indexation on NAS does not help.

Whether there is what that decision of the specified problem?

In my local network, also there is a computer on Windows 7, at it what or problems with connection and work on the files placed on NAS do not arise.

Easy Find takes forever.

The Mac Find File and Spotlight function, makes me long for Windows 8.

If you buy a new Mac - WARNING!! be careful to remember where you put each file AND each file folder, because your Mac won't be able to find it ever again.

You can reindex, use spotlight, (which will find lots of unrelated files,) or wait 5 minutes for EasyFind to find lots of unrelated files. You might get lucky and find the file you were working on 10 minutes prior.

You probably will want to buy a Windows 8 machine to catalogue your Mac Files before your Mac loses them, after they've been saved to a folder your Mac also won't be able to find.

When you budget for a new Mac, include the cost of the new Windows machine to help find files.

Steve Jobs, we miss you! (you must be very busy rolling in your grave!)

I see MACS on the decline - Thanks for nothing Apple!

My setup is as follows:

Intel xServe running 10.7.5 Server

Drive Bays 2 and 3 set up as a mirrored raid as a share point formated OS Extended (Journaled)

Client computers range from older iMacs running 10.5 to MacBookPro running 10.5 to newer iMacs running 10.8

All connect via AFP

none of the clients can search the share point via finder

I have attempted all of the various suggestions on this thread.

Two questions:

Any other options to make this work?

Is this issue fixed in newer versions of Server?

Seriously, what is the point of a server if a client can not search the drive contents?

The part about this that REALLY boils my blood is that I can connect to any other computer in my office and search that hard drive in the finder and it works just fine. I just can's search a server share point.

I can connect to and search my server backups on a NAS drive but I can not search the server drive directly.

STUPID!

Come on Apple. 20 years of cutting edge computing and now three iterations of server software and still no solution to such a basic and necessary function. Wish I never upgraded from Tiger!

Hi Lost Account,

Thanks for taking the time for your thoughtful reply.

But, I am pretty lost in your explanation.

I am just trying to search my external and internal hard drives for files.

In the past, you would just use command-f . This was how you found files for the last 30 years on a MAC.

That no longer works on Macs w/ 10.8.5

Any idea why Apple would change this function? The basic find file function seems to be the #1 most important function of a computer.

And Spotlight is very limited in search capabilities. Even if you find a file, there's no way to see where it is. i.e. no right click, etc. It lists very old versions of files at the top of it's list, burying new versions.

Third party software EasyFind is extremely slow, and presently can't find any files either. It probably needs to be manually set to re-index.

When you say "plugging this into the terminal" I don't know what you mean. Are these instructions applicable to what I'm trying to resolve?

Are there possibly step by step (possibly with pictures) instructions on how to fix the broken MAC search function?

I miss command-f . .. . .

it always worked so flawlessly.

Thanks again!

Just type the command, sudo mdutil -i on, and then leave a space at the tail end. After that, mount the S drive and drag and drop it into the terminal window then hit return.

*Note, if the network drive name changes the existing index of the drive will no longer pair so you will have to reindex again. That's life.

Hello,

I have found the solution here http://www.lucidica.com/help/73/. There is a terminal command that you would need to run in order to enable indexing of the desired network drive.

Kind regards,

Nikita.