USB exFAT Disk Access without cease (spotlight disabled)?

Hi,

I initially upgraded to Sierra when it first released. I had a few issues & crashes at that time, so quickly Time Machine reverted back to El Capitan.

Now, much later, I just am giving Sierra another go...though one of the major issues I was having is still present, which I am hoping you all might be able to help me resolve.

Basically, I have a USB 3.0 external hard drive (Touro Pro 1TB, if that's noteworthy) that is formatted at exFAT & plugged into my system. The disk is accessed continually and never stops, despite Spotlight being disabled for that drive -- which was the fix for El Capitan.

I am curious if anyone has a solution for this, as otherwise I am going to have to (yet again) revert back to El Capitan...since this will undoubtedly burn out my hard drive & hinder read/writes when actually using the drive.

I'm running on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013).

Any suggestions or solutions are greatly appreciated. 🙂

Thank you,

John