spotlight indexing lion

Once you install lion it starts indexing, based on how much stuff you have on your mac, the time will vary. I have quite a bit of stuff, 200 gb and it took about 2 hours. i just put my mbp down and let it do its thing until it was done.

Have you restarted your Mac? A restart usually solves the problem.

The amount of time it takes to index depends on the amount of files on your hard drive. The process will be slowed down if you are continuously using your Mac or not letting it finish (for example putting it to sleep, shutting it down, etc.).

Hopefully that helps! If you still have a problem, don't be afraid to repost. It may be necessary to rebuild the spotlight database or add exceptions to certain folders that Spotlight gets hung up on. Good luck, enjoy OS X Lion!

My Mac is doing great, not slow or anything, but when I first got Lion it was indexing for about 30 minutes, then it was done. Now I'm logged on and it's indexing AGAIN...Anyone know why?

After installing Lion on my MBPro it took about 4-5 hours for indexing without a break (because of the 800-900GB data :-o
I suppose if you shut down your Mac or gets him into sleep modus the indexing will go on next start.

Using console I found the the indexing process was craching due to some entries in /Library/Spotlight that apparently were not compatible with Lion. I deleted them (one from the program Finale and one from iWeb) and then things proceeded along just fine.

How do you know if the indexing process was crashing? I installed a 1 terabyte disk and Lion is tiring to index. At first it says 2 weeks, then 5 days, then 2 weeks again. It seems to be restarting all the time. I also have problem with very large iPhoto and iTunes fies. iTunes music stops every few seconds, and the 140gb iPhoto file goes into "not responding" mode every time. Please help.

Thank you very much

Same problem here on a MacBook 6.1 😟

Rebuild your spotlight index.

Use the system prefs in lion for spotlight than do the following. Just add your MAc HD or Boot drive to the privacy list for a few seconds, then remove it. Forces Spotlight to rebuild the index..

The way Spotlight works is by analyzing the entire contents of your hard drive, then storing its findings in a database which it can reference quickly during a search. In my case, the database somehow got screwed up and needed to be reset. Here’s how I was able to fix the problem in literally 20 seconds:

1.) Open System Preferences and click the Spotlight pane.

2.) Click the Privacy tab at the top of the window. Here you will see a list of places that Spotlight has been instructed not to index.

3.) Click the plus ➕ button and find your hard drive, or open a separate Finder window and drag your hard drive to the list area.

4.) After a few seconds (3-5 should be enough), select the drive in the System Preferences window and click the minus ➖ button.

Spotlight will begin a scan of your entire hard drive and rewrite it’s database from scratch. You may notice that your Mac becomes extremely slow during this time, which is completely normal. In fact, it might be a good idea to walk away from the computer for a while since it could take a few hours to complete. Once it’s done, your searches should be faster, more reliable, and more accurate.

Well,

That rebuilt the index but didn't do a thing to improve the search results... and the search for a search continues.

I'm running on a mid 2007 MBP (2.4Ghz, 4GB). My problem is or was similar. When I first installed Lion a couple of days ago it tried to start indexing. It slowed every thing down, but didn't seem to crash anything. It however didn't finish, because I had an update for Safari, which required a reboot. The reboot of course canceled the index, and I actually found that Lion improved overall system performance. I think it has something to do with it now (finally) running on a 64bit kernel. Anyway, it eventually tryed again to index, when I logged on. This time it brought my computer to its knees, and crashed the Finder. It took a couple of forced restarts to make it stop indexing and crashing. So asuming that Spotlight didn't start indexing when I first logged in after I upgraded, I looked for a solution on how to force it to index after log in. The suggestion here appears to have worked so well that there's no longer any serious performance or crashing issues. It did seem to improve the search performance for me, but my issue was the indexing itself.

The only problem still is if and when it wants to index again. I don't remember Snow Leopard indexing very much. So if we're lucky 10.7.3 (or after) will have fixed the problem!

I'm having a similar issue: After installing Lion and doing a couple of reboots, it started indexing but it stops at some point and only adds time to the estimate remaining time. First 4 hours, then 8, then 10, 12, and the time just grows up (like "4 weeks").

Gordon Buchanan: How did you found which files were causing trouble using the console as you said?

I did what Alan Roseman suggests on this thread about adding the HD to ignore on Spotlight options and then remove it from ignore to rebuild the index from scratch, but everytime it's the same, it reaches a point where the indexing freezes and the supposed estimated remaining time grows a lot.