OS X 10.8.3, TM & Spotlight Issue

If you have any other partitions or disks attached, you should probably exclude them in the Spotlight preferences. Similarly in Time Machine Preferences>Options, make sure other volumes are excluded.

Then, after a new installation, Spotlight can take a long while to complete. Time Machine too, and I would not contemplate running them at the same time, or the computer will grind to a halt. Let Spotlight finish first before starting the Time Machine backup.

As putnik says, while Spotlight is indexing, backups will be slow, perhaps barely moving.

If it's taking hours and hours to index, it's possible the actual index on your Startup drive is damaged. If so, reindexing may not help.

Cancel the backup, then try to Repair your startup drive, per #6 in Using Disk Utility.

If that doesn't help, you may have to actually delete the index so OSX will re-create it "from scratch." The pink box in #D2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting shows how to do it on a Time Machine backup drive; use the same procedure, but apply it to your internal HD instead.

Spotlight can take several hours to run after a new installation. I put my power settings for the computer not to sleep and leave the lid open overnight. The same with Time machine during the first run.

Ian-S wrote:

Hi Pondini,

The problem is not Time Machine, I think. I turned that off and restarted Spotlight but it's stuck estimating the index time. I verified my HD which came back without any problems. Hmm...

Did you try actually deleting the index? If it's still estimating after many hours, and there are no other disks connected, that may well fix it. We do see this occasionally on Mountain Lion.

The pink box in #D2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting shows how to do it on a Time Machine backup drive; use the same procedure, but apply it to your internal HD instead.

The index is normally hidden; you need to be able to see it to delete it via the Finder. Installing the Tinker Tool app via the link there is one way of making them visible.

Then locate and delete the index (but the one on your Mac's HD).

Which part of that do you need help with?

You need to open your internal HD via the Finder. The hidden files will be shown at the top.

Your internal HD is almost certainly named Macintosh HD. If it's not shown in your Finder sidebar, click Go in the Finder's menubar, select Computer, and it should appear, with a gray disk icon. Click it to open.

Fingers crossed! 😉

Yay! 🙂

You're quite welcome.