Tiger starts to index my fire wire backup drives

[JohnCoffee]

Whenever I connect my backup drive (6partitions), Spotlight in Tiger starts to index the drive, and I don't like this at all. When I configure Spotlight in it's preferences not to do this, the indexing stops, until I smart update the partitions again. (actually this is clear to me, since the orginal drive/partition has been indexed before).
This brings me to the idea when typing this, that a copy of the orginal index now sits also on the backup drive. But why does spotlight starts to index it then?
Maybe diffult to desribe but you maybe get my point...

Thanks for a feedback
John

[dnanian]

We don't know why this happens, John, but we're trying to figure it out too. Spotlight's pretty new stuff, so I guess it shouldn't be terribly surprising that there are some teething pains.

(And, yes, we copy the index because when Disk Utility does this, it copies it too. We're looking to see if there's a better way to handle the issue...)

[JohnCoffee]

Any news here Dave?

I just thought I'll ask. Have a idea how it could be solved:

Shouldn't a backup drive be safer if it is "write protected" (=read only) after doing a backup? The system then can't write on it anything (like reindexing the spotlight file...).
Maybe SD! could change the permissions during backup and then set it back to read only afterwards....

just a idea...

[dnanian]

There is news here, John -- check the FAQ. I've provided a technique to disable spotlight there.

[JohnCoffee]

aaaahh. Cool! Thanks a lot.

Best regards
John

[dnanian]

A pleasure. Tell me how it works for you!

[Hoosier_1701]

Is disabling Spotlight on the clone something you recommend? What are the pros and cons? Here is what I can think of:

Pro: cuts down on CPU usage; prevents duplicate results during Spotlight search when external drive is connected.

Con: search on the external drive doesn't work if you need to find a particular file

Do I have this right?

[dnanian]

That's right, although since you already have the same files on the original drive, the drawback isn't too bad...

[Hoosier_1701]

That's right, although since you already have the same files on the original drive, the drawback isn't too bad...
Right. So, you do recommend disabling Spotlight on the clone then?

[dnanian]

If the indexing annoys you, sure. It's not necessary, though.

[JohnCoffee]

A pleasure. Tell me how it works for you!

It works great ;)

Thanks a lot

John

[dnanian]

You're welcome: glad to hear it.