Spotlight Privacy

[rock15478]

I have searched the forum and have noticed many similar instances as this, and I have read the FAQ. However, it hasn't really helped me. I cannot add a cloned drive to the spotlight privacy pane. It simply won't let me. I can add any other folder or drive, except for the drives that were cloned using SD. I have tried the obvious, just as re-starting. It will let me add the drive when nothing is on it, but after creating a copy with SD, it doesn't allow me to add the drive. No idea what's going on. Any help?

[dnanian]

I suggest using Disk Utility to erase the drive. Once done, restart your Mac. Then, add it into Privacy.

It should go in: make sure you quit System Preferences and restart it to ensure it stays.

Then, you should be able to make a Smart Update to the drive and it'll stay in.

[chris_johnsen]

Earlier I ran into a situation I think was similar. I vaguely remembered advice to erase the disk, but I was feeling "lazy" and did not want to spend the time to erase, reboot, add-to-Privacy, and recopy.

My situation was 10.4.11 and a new external drive. With the new external drive hooked up, I used SuperDuper! to create a disk image of the drive's original content ("image X"). Next I repartitioned the external drive so I could make multiple full-drive backups of the normal boot drive plus one extra partition for scratch space ("partitions A, B, C, D, E, and F"). Then I used SD to restore the disk image onto one of the partitions ("image X" -> "partition F"). At this point I decided that I wanted to add all the partitions to Spotlight's Privacy list (to prevent the copies from bulking out Spotlight search results and to discourage using the scratch partition for long term storage). I found that I could drop "partitions A, B, C, D, and E" (all still empty) into the Privacy list just fine, but "partition F" (the one onto which I used SD to restore) refused to go in there. Incidentally, I was also unable to copy and paste a new icon onto "partition F", but was successful with all the rest. Eventually I decided to play with the ownership setting. When I disabled ownership on "partition F" I was able to add it to the Privacy list and change its icon.

Maybe this will work for others.

rock15478, if you have not already gone the erase/add/recopy route, you might like to try this (then probably re-enable ownership if it works to put it into Spotlight). If it works, let us know.

BTW "Ignore ownership on this volume" is in the permissions section of Finder's Info window for the volume/partition. In my testing, you have to have it checked to drag it to Spotlight's Privacy tab and/or change the drive's icon (actually I suspect that you just need write access to the root of the drive, but this enables that easily enough).

Is it my imagination or does SD always leave the target drive with ownership enabled? Even if, like it was in my case (original disk contents to image), the source drive has it disabled?

[dnanian]

Yes, we always turn on ownership and leave it on.

[rock15478]

Wow, that worked. Much more simple than erasing the drive and re-cloning. That brings up another question though...not related to SD, but related to this topic, if anyone can answer it for me...

I have 2 internal drives and on the main drive, it says "you can: read and write" "user: read and write", etc...under the disk info....but for my second internal drive (used for data only), it only says "you can: read" but then under user, it says "read and write" - Now, I know that I can do both, read and write to this drive. Why does it only say "read" for the you can section under disk info??

I'm sorry if that sounds confusing...but any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[dnanian]

Interesting: I wonder why the system didn't let you control your 'own' drive. Strange, but good tip -- thanks, chris.

[JaneDoe]

Yes! The tip to put checkmark in "Ignore ownership on this volume" in the permissions section of Finder's Info window for the volume/partition works!! And is So Easy. Thank goodness. Having to "erase, reboot, add-to-Privacy, and recopy" each of my 3 back-up partitions would have soured me on SuperDuper.