How to prevent Spotlight from Indexing Backup Drives?

[TomBB]

Recently purchased an external drive and Super Duper, and am perplexed on how to prevent Spotlight from indexing my imaged drives on the external HD. I have gone to spotlight preferences, but when I drag the Ext drive images to the drop field, they are not added, nor when I use the + sign to add them.

Anyone found a solution to this issue?
Thanks all you gurus and people with opinions!

[dnanian]

Try erasing the drive with Disk Utility, then restart your Mac. Once restarted, see if it goes int the Privacy tab...

[TomBB]

I also found out how to then force spotlight to reindex my main HD via the terminal. Really pretty easy to do if others want to reindex, even for a novice--just make sure to do it from an administrator account, not a standard user account.

[dnanian]

(For those who don't know, it's

sudo mdutil -E -p "/Volumes/the-volume-you-want-to-index"

).

[t3rockhall]

Should I care if Spotlight re-indexes my backup drive (it is doing this)?
If not, should I let the re-indexing complete before I backup?
How about when I use my backup drive to bring my vacation home Mac up-to-date?

[dnanian]

I'd certainly add the backup into Privacy. Not quite sure what you mean about your vacation Mac -- you mean Spotlight?

[t3rockhall]

Originally Posted by dnanian

I'd certainly add the backup into Privacy. Not quite sure what you mean about your vacation Mac -- you mean Spotlight?

I have 2 iMacs in 2 houses. I backup my main machine into an external HD, using SD. When I go to my vacation home's iMac, I boot from the external and "back up" so to speak, to the iMac there, in effect, bringing both iMacs and the external to the identical state at that moment. Then I run from the iMac and shut off the external.

When I'm ready to return home, I back up the vacation iMac that I've been using, to the external, and then copy IT back into the main iMac upon my return.

I guess I don't understand "Privacy." I'll have to look into that.
OK, I found it. I dragged the external into the window, and I suppose that's that.

[dnanian]

Yep, that's that!

[Khuzud]

For me, it's not that. Spotlight keeps reindexing my backup drive, and it's really annoying.

It doesn't happen all the time. Maybe once out of every five backups. I plug the drive in, turn it on, and then it starts grinding away as Spotlight tries to create its index.

I have to turn it off, otherwise the backup will take forever if I try to backup to that drive while Spotlight is indexing it. I have no problem adding the drive to Spotlight's privacy list, and as soon as I do that it immediately stops indexing, and I can proceed with my backup.

But I have to keep doing that, over and over. Spotlight seems to occasionally forget that I don't want it to index this drive. Why?

[dnanian]

I don't know, Khuzud: it could be a bug in Spotlight. Are you running OSX 10.4.3 or later?

[Khuzud]

Yes, this is OS X 10.4.9, running on a 15" Powerbook G4. I'm backing up to a drive over USB2.

[dnanian]

Unless there was some kind of error, I can't think of any reason, under 10.4.9, why your Spotlight "privacy" state wasn't retained over a restart or unplug/plug.

[SeaSwift]

I just updated my backup drive to find Spotlight indexing the drive even when I had it in the Privacy tab, it's not listed there anymore and I couldn't add it. Looking around the net I found Spotlight tips I haven't tried it yet but I will the next time I create a backup.

[Khuzud]

Thanks for the pointer to that website. Using the information there I think I've fixed my Spotlight problem.

I created a shell script with the line:

defaults write /Volumes/Backup/.Spotlight-V100/_IndexPolicy Policy -int 3

Then I set SuperDuper to run that script after completing the backup, using the advanced options.

I haven't had a problem with Spotlight indexing my backup drive since then.

[forty2]

Spotlight always forgets the "Privacy" setting after awhile.

What I do is set up the backup to run later, then unmount the external drive from the Finder but leave it attached. SD seems to be smart enough to mount a dismounted drive. When the backup is finished it should unmount the drive. At least that's how I do it... seems to work.