Why Won't Mavericks Index My External Hard Drive?

Adding and removing the disk from the blacklist, or running those terminal commands are not a "fix", they are a band aid to an unssolved problem.

I have a Verbatim disk and I had the same problem. It camed formatted in FAT with drivers a bundle software. I erased it and format it to MacOS Extended (Journaled) but I had the same issue eveyone is having. I did a small partition in ExFAT at the end of the disk for sharing files with PCs so I suspect that might make a conflict. I'm formating that small Partition to FAT just in case. Still, the problem is in the MacOS Extended main partition, the ExFAT one was never used and never had a file yet and the other partition shouldn't make the compatible one to stop indexing, still there's a giant bug around.

As I said, Apple haven't programmed their software properly in order to cope with the ExFAT file system. If you format to the proprietary MacOS formats (journalled for instance) it should work.

To those people that say it is a fault with the drives themselves, you are wrong. It is the programming by Apple that is buggy.

If you require using ExFAT (like a lot of people do) than you will have to disable spotlight to be guaranteed a problem-free use.

nirurin wrote:

As I said, Apple haven't programmed their software properly in order to cope with the ExFAT file system.

I assume that you can substantiate that extraordinary statement?

Csound1 wrote:

nirurin wrote:

As I said, Apple haven't programmed their software properly in order to cope with the ExFAT file system.

I assume that you can substantiate that extraordinary statement?

Apple's spotlight technology relies on storing index information in the volume structure (directories) of OS X Extended (Journaled) volumes. Neither FAT nor ExFAT (both are antiquated MS DOS/Windows volume structures) have provisions for storage of the spotlight meta-data. It isn't that Apple has not programmed their software properly, rather that such programming would require changing the FAT/ExFAT volume structure thus violating the standard and rendering the volumes unreadable by Windows computers and other devices programmed to read/write FAT/ExFAT. At one time Apple used an indexing technology called "Sherlock" that stored its indexes in invisible index files, but there were severe limitations to the Sherlock technology, not to mention frequent problems, so it was, quite appropriately IMHO, drropped in favor of the far more robust Spotlight technology.

You seem to be saying that ExFat does not allow for storage of Spotlight data, that is different from "Apple haven't programmed their software properly in order to cope with the ExFAT file system"

So who has programmed their software properly in order to cope with the ExFAT file system, in your opinion?

Csound1 wrote:

You seem to be saying that ExFat does not allow for storage of Spotlight data, that is different from "Apple haven't programmed their software properly in order to cope with the ExFAT file system"

So who has programmed their software properly in order to cope with the ExFAT file system, in your opinion?

Microsoft. After all FAT and ExFAT are both Microsoft's proprietary technology.

Microsoft

Microsoft's programming failed to make provision for Spotlight Meta Data, just as Apple's implementation of it fails to do.

Oh! Maybe it's a file system limitation?

The real problem with ExFat is quite different, the lack of a secondary file allocation table renders it more vulnerable to errors and harder to recover from than FAT32, which should be used in preference if the 4GB file size limit is not a problem.

Csound1 wrote:

Microsoft

Microsoft's programming failed to make provision for Spotlight Meta Data, just as Apple's implementation of it fails to do.

Oh! Maybe it's a file system limitation?

It is not surprising that Microsoft failed to make provisions in FAT and ExFAT for Spotlight Meta Data as Spotlight is an Apple proprietary technology.

So yes it is a file system limitation.

If ExFAT is unable to support a spotlight index.... then why does the apple software continuously attempt to index it, when clearly it will not work?

It can't be hard to put a "If format = ExFAT then Spotlight = False" line in there somewhere. (Yes I'm aware that syntax isnt correct, I'm paraphrasing, before the trolling begins again).

Or alternatively, a popup message that says "If your hard drive is formatted in a FAT format, spotlight will cause errors that will cause slowdown and lag issues."

Or "If you are using a FAT file system, it is best to turn off the spotlight service".

However instead of this, Apple make it seem like spotlight will work on any and all file systems, when it doesnt. Instead they keep qiuiet on the subejct, while people lay the blame on drive manufacturers (which is just wrong) or microsoft (which is also wrong, but at least has a vague point).

Spotlight is an apple srvice, which is not working as designed on certain mainstream file systems. Apple should either correct this fault (if thats possible), or advertise the fact that spotlight will only work on MacOS specific file systems. This has nothing to do with anyone else.

I'm not sure if this was an update, I think a lot of what's being suggested is overkill (keep in mind I only read the first page of comments). Once you set the external drive in the list in Spotilight Privacy, that list should recognize the drive when you plug it back in. I'd suggest naming each drive first, but this works on my machine.

I have a Verbatim external HDD, exact same thing.

"I suspect it is WD responsibility to fix their software and not Apple"

well it used to work fine - for me and every other poster on here. If Apple break something that used to work, in my book it's on them to fix it...

WD produced some bad software, so bad that not only did some people lose access to their drives some of them lost the data on it as well. WD paid for the data recovery software, Apple were not and are not involved in WD's mess.

Remove all WD drive software. You may have to reformat ot repartition the drive so make sure you backup any data on it.

It is WD's responsibility to keep their software (for the operating systems they sell the drive for use with) up to date, something they failed to do.

Wrong: it worked with the Apple OS as it was when the HDD was bought. Apple then changed the OS and broke it.

And anyway, what about the other brands?

ianwest1 wrote:

Wrong: it worked with the Apple OS as it was when the HDD was bought. Apple then changed the OS and broke it.

WD elected to supply software for OS X that was defective, it is their responsibility to make their products compatible with the operating system they are sold as being suitable for..

WD dropped the ball.

Other brands are not affected.

Can you not read, or are you just a bit dim? I have a Verbatim - same problem. Somoene else above has another brand that is also affected: neither of these rbands, as far as I'm aware, are made by WD...