Mavericks: Spotlight Indexing Forever!

Hi.

I have the same problem 😟

I waited until last week to upgrade to Mavericks, because I wanted to avoid "classic problems when upgrading OS". I thought that many months after the release of the new OS version everything would be problemless.

But, I encounter the same issue of spotlight infinite indexing.

I carefully read many threads and articles.

I found this one:

http://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/spotlight-control-mac-os-x-mavericks-10-9/

Any thought?

Ideally, I would like Spotlight to function properly, not just blocking it.

Thanks for comments! 🙂

It's really getting time that Apple fixes this. It seriously impacts my work having to turn off Spotlight. Here is my problem description: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5506283?answerId=25002528022#25002528022

Had this as a bug report and they said something was unloading Spotlight via plist.

here is the fix:

in terminal

Please do the follwoing:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.index.plist

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.scan.plist

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.spindump.plist

<reboot>

sudo launchctl list

worked for my machine.

I'm having this exact issue as well, and nothing that any of the others on this thread have suggested has solved my issue. My 13" 2012 MB Pro has worked flawlessly through all upgrades, including OS X Mavericks. Until last week (Feb. 26th) when there was a major security upgrade to OS X, I never had an issue with Spotlight indexing. As of last Thursday, the 27th, all I get is a that screenshot that you have in your post. I have tried everything in the last 3 days: rebooting and reinstalling OS X Mavericks using the OS X installer; verifying and repairing disk permissions; adding my Dropbox and Skydrive folders to the privacy tab in Spotlight; adding and then removing Macintosh HD in the prvacy tab in spotlight; NOTHING has worked, and all I get is that **** spinning beachball when all my programs freeze for about 10 - 15 seconds every couple of minutes. I have no external drives, and time machine backup is turned off completely. Is there anything else anyone can suggest that hasn't already been tried? I'm about to throw my MacBook against the wall, I'm so frsutrated by this issue!

Fabulous. I wonder if Dropbox is doing the same thing, especially Dropbox with 1Password stored on it...

I really don't want to be typing a reply on this site searching for answers to problems I shouldn't be having with Mavericks....

But here I am pining for a time when my brand new Mac Mini Server i7 will stop freaking indexing, start backing up, and stop acting like the 2007 iMac Core 2 Duo with a 5400 rpm HD I replaced with this new machine!

FYI. I am having the same issue as Exxar1. Started after the lastest security update. It seems to be triggered when I run Etrade trading platform on Safari. mds_store just takes over the machine. It doesn't clear even if I stop running the Etrade application. However, I seem to be able to clear it when I run Disk verify and/or Disk Permission verify. Runs fine until I start Etrade Pro again. It could be related to Adobe's Java engine that Etrade Pro relies heavily on.

FIX exFAT now, this is horrible, can't even search my own drives!
Not converting to NTFS for WIN compatibility as the transfer speed is slow and CPU intensive with available drivers on my Mac.

HTFS is not an option for said Windows compatibility. FAT32 is also not an option as many of my files are over 4GB. Why does Apple even pretend to hold native support for the exFAT file format when the OS is crippled when we use it?

FINALLY. Removing my StorEDGE flash drive through Spotlight Privacy stopped this madness. thanks to this thread!!

I Moved the

Another neat thing is that my Time Machine also now work better, when I moved the same USER/Library/MAIL to the

MAIL mapp

from USER/Library/MAIL

to Spotlight Integrity

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6033391?answerId=25334136022#25334136022

and also the

MAIL mapp

from USER/Library/MAIL

to the TimeMachine Exclude

An finally TimeMachine works, and Spotlight not running out my battery.

I feel excited for the moment. I Hope I finally, fixed it.

I am also doing Mailbox > Rebuild, right now.

An "apple genius" friend sent me this and it fixed my spotlight indexing problem on my iMac. Hope it helps all others out there with the similar issue. Very easy solution!!

Frank

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-to-fix-spotlight-indexing-in-os-x

I had same problem. Estimating indexing time for ages and computer really slow.

Followed the Observer instructions. Went to Systems Preferences. Spotlight. Privacy. Put all extenals in using "+". No change with indexing issue. Then added my internal iMac hard drive into privacy so there was nothing for Spotlight to index. Now, going to spotlight on the computer, it was happy - no longer indexing. Restarted. Back to system preferences. Took my hard drive out of privacy. Started estimating time for indexing. In about 30 mins, it came back with a 5 hr estimate. Left it running overnight. Seems to be working. Haven't taken any external drives out of privcay as yet, but at least Spotlight appears to be working on my actual computer, which now is fast again. Fingers crossed.

My spotlight wasn't indexing properly, for some reason I still don't understand. Eventually, I found myself in that state people have talked about here, where spotlight ran for days and couldn't even estimate when it would finish. On a different apple thread, I found a solution that worked in my case.

1. Go into spotlight preferences. Click on Privacy and + and add Macintosh HD to the list of things not to index.

2. Reboot.

3. Go into spotlight preferences. Click on Privacy and - to remove Macintosh HD from the list of things not to index.

Suddenly, finally, the world was right again.

After trying for hours many different things (and no, not indexing the whole harddisk is *not* a solution, despite 90% of the people describe variants how this is done), I finally could "fix" my spotlight.

My solution was to first add the whole harddisk to the list of directories not to index. Then, I started, directory for directory, to remove directories from the list, always waiting that spotlight finishes indexing. At some point it appeared to get stuck again, so I added the directory which caused it to the list again and removed it again after spotlight seemed to be fine again.

It's an annoying solution and I don't know whether I'll have to do the same thing again if the problem reappears. Some might however want to give this a try.

Which folder was the culprit for you?

Any interesting log messages for spotlight or mdutil associated with this folder in your console log?

I don't know if there really was a "culprit". The spotlight got stuck only once for a large directory containg a lot of data, but it worked again when I added and removed the folder to the list.

I find those messages in my mind (don't know if they were triggered by the stuck spotlight though):

27/5/14 2:29:22.863 PM mds[4076]: (Warning) Server: No stores registered for metascope "kMDQueryScopeComputer"