Where does Spotlight store the info when it catalogs a Hard Drive?

The Spotlight index is stored at the top of each hard drive in a hidden directory named ".Spotlight-V100". You can use the Privacy settings to stop an indexing operation, but the safest way to disable indexing and delete the files is to issue the following commands in the Terminal

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/yourdrive
sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/yourdrive

The index doesn't take up a heap of room - for example, I saved 200MB on a 120GB drive by deleting the index.

Hope that helps

Matt

Spotlight saves all its index-related files in a hidden directory at the root level of a volume it has indexed. But you don't have to find them manually. Just add the partitions you don't want Spotlight to index to the Privacy pane of the Spotlight preferences and it will clear the items in the file for you, giving you back what little space the file takes up.

Spotlight stores its indexing data on the volume that is indexed in an invisible folder named .Spotlight-V100, so it isn't using any of the space on your startup drive. Put the volumes you don't want indexed into the Privacy pane of the Spotlight panel in System Preferences.

BTW, if your backups are on the same drive as your startup volume, that is, you have simply partitioned a single drive to have everything, just in different volumes on that drive, your backups won't do you any good if the drive fails. And they do fail sooner or later.
Francine


Francine
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