Disabling Spotlight (Privacy Controlpane doesn't work)

[plessl]

I know, this is supposed to be a FAQ, but the hints in this forum didn't work.

How do I permanently disable Spotlight indexing for my backup made by SuperDuper! ?

When trying to add my backup Volume to the Privacy list in the Spotlight control pane, the Volume (/Volume/Backup) is not added, but simply ignored by the control pane.

Spotlight Indexing is currently enabled, see the following shell output:

sudo mdutil -s /Volumes/Backup/
/Volumes/Backup/:
Status: Indexing Enabled

I would be glad for any hint.

Best regards,
Christian

[dnanian]

You want indexing to be enabled, actually, you just want the drive in privacy (which disables indexing a different way).

If you can't get it to add to the Privacy tab, it's likely that the .Spotlight_V100 folder, at the top of the drive, is corrupt.

Try removing this folder. Then, restart your Mac. Once restarted, add it to the Spotlight Privacy tab, and I think it'll work properly.

[plessl]

Are you suggesting to remove the .Spotlight_V100 folder on my boot disk, or on my backup disk?

I did remove the folder on my backup disk (rm -rf /Volumes/Backup/.Spotlight_V100) and then did a restart.

But I still cannot add /Volumes/Backup to the Privacy tab. It seems, that it is still ignored. I did also reboot after trying to add it, but this didn't help either.

Do have any additional idea, what's going wrong?

Best regards,
Christian

[dnanian]

On the backup disk. I'm quite surprised it won't let you add it to the Privacy tab. Why do you think it's ignored? Does it not appear in the list? (You can't judge by the mdutil command, because it will indicate that indexing is enabled.)

[plessl]

Yes, if I try to add my backup volume to the privacy list, it simply doesn't appear in the list.

BTW: My backup disk has two partitions named Backup and Extended. If I add the other partition (Extended) to the list in the privacy tab, it gets added to the list as expected.

Do you think it makes sense to delete the /.Spotlight-V100 directory as well?

[dnanian]

No, I don't think that'd make sense. Try booting into Single User Mode and deleting .Spotlight_V100 from there: that will hopefully fix it (since Spotlight won't be active).

Alternatively, you could try booting in Safe Boot, which will disable the indexing daemon, clean up the spotlight folder, then boot back and add to privacy.