I still don't understand Spotlight

[Timmy]

When performing an erase destination/backup all files clone:

1) Why does the Spotlight indicator flash for a few minutes at the beginning of the cloning?

2) Why does the destination volume apparently get re-indexed (Spotlight and destination disk activity) after the clone? Wouldn't the destination volume get the Spotlight info from the target copied to it...?

10.4.7 PPC
SuperDuper! 2.1.3

[dnanian]

Try adding the destination drive into the Spotlight Preference Pane's "Privacy" tab. Timmy.

(And, no -- copying the spotlight index doesn't make sense, because it's invalid on a different device.)

[Timmy]

So, the recommened procedure for cloning under 10.4.x is to add the destination drive to the Spotlight provacy tab?

The users guide doesn't seem to mention Spotlight at all...

[dnanian]

If you don't want the drive indexed, yes. It's not mentioned because it's basically transparent: you handle the drive the way you would any other volume.

[mjt]

Originally Posted by dnanian

If you don't want the drive indexed, yes. It's not mentioned because it's basically transparent: you handle the drive the way you would any other volume.

I was confused about this, because I don't use the Privacy tab; I use mdutil to turn off indexing on all my disks. However, when I do that, SuperDuper always turns on indexing for the target volume.

[dnanian]

Yeah -- you definitely do not want to use mdutil. While that was necessary pre-10.4.3 (there were bugs in Privacy), they fixed 'em months ago.

Using Privacy will ensure that they're not indexed and not searched, which is what you really want.

[rbf]

Originally Posted by dnanian

If you don't want the drive indexed, yes. It's not mentioned because it's basically transparent: you handle the drive the way you would any other volume.

I think it should be mentioned in the User's Guide because it is not transparent to all levels of users. If someone who has never done a backup buys an external HD to use Superduper for backups, they could easily do a backup and wonder why it is taking so long (Spotlight is indexing the backup volume). It is not at all obvious to everyone that you have to add the volume name to the Privacy Tab.

Once you have added the name to the Privacy Tab, I believe it is removed by the OS when you erase that volume, so you have to remember to re-add the name in that case. At least that was my experience on my 500MHz PB running 10.4.8 and Superduper 2.1.3.

Thanks for the great software.

[dnanian]

Understood, of course. It's unfortunate that many things about OSX aren't documented at all by Apple, and I have to tread a fine line between turning the SuperDuper! User's Guide into a "Missing Manual" for OSX and documentation for our product!

But, I'll see what I can do in the future.