Spotlight stuck indexing "2 hours left"

I've got a Mac Pro with several disks (internal and external), and since my upgrade from 10.8 to 10.9, all of the disks Spotlight says "Indexing" with 2-3 hours left and it's been that way for days. Also the search in Mail isn't finding everything. I've tried starting/stopping the MDS process, deleting .Spotlight-V100, adding/removing the disks from the Spotlight privacy tab, and same result - it starts re-indexing and then hangs with hours left. What am I missing - how to see what it's doing?

iPad, iOS 5

Posted on Feb 10, 2018 3:32 PM

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3 replies

Feb 11, 2018 5:40 AM in response to Michael Levin

Ok then it may just be a corrupt Preference file.

In finder click Go on the menubar and then click on Go To Folder and enter the following ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist press Go.

A new Finder window should open with the file highlighted, move the file to your Desktop.

Now restart your mac, a new Spotlight preference file will be generated. Open System Preferences> Spotlight> Search Results now check all the options you want Spotlight to search, then try a search. Now try the Privacy settings again to see if indexing has improved.

Feb 11, 2018 3:37 AM in response to Michael Levin

When you remove the disks from the Spotlight Privacy panel do you remove the disks one at a time or all at the same time. I find if I remove them one at a time and let one disk be indexed before removing the next disk speeds up the process rather than having it try to index several disks at once. Start with the smaller of the disks (or least full/ total GBs) first to monitor.

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Spotlight stuck indexing "2 hours left"

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