Stopping Spotlight indexing on backup drives, & vice versa

I use SuperDuper! to clone my internal HD. It's easy enough to stop Spotlight from indexing a particular drive, BUT the block has to be applied each time I re-clone the drive. Not only that, but if I launch from the cloned external drive, it tries to index the internal drive! And blocking this only works until the internal drive gets backed up again! Very frustrating! Is there a simple, easy way to (a) keep Spotlight going on my internal drive, but (b) make sure it doesn't try to index my external drive (or try indexing the internal when I boot from the external)? Or am I doomed to constantly have to manually turn off Spotlight?

RE the posting: << Is there a simple, easy way to (a) keep Spotlight going on my internal drive, but (b) make sure it doesn't try to index my external drive (or try indexing the internal when I boot from the external)? Or am I doomed to constantly have to manually turn off Spotlight?>> Call to all Apple shareware/freeware developers out there: There are some folks who do not want ANYthing to do with Spotlight. For reasons of our own, logical, reasonable, or otherwise, we want to DISABLE Spotlight from mucking with our drives, and essentially remove all the existing index files as well. What is needed is some kind of utility that allows the user to _manage_ Spotlight - that is to say, to provide a non-UNIX, non-Terminal environment that will give the end user the choice to turn Spotlight OFF, and remove any existing index files and related files. Of course, it should also provide controls to turn Spotlight back on if desired. We already have utilties that permit the user to disable journaling if desired (for the record, I have journaling turned off on all my drives). Why not something similar with which to control Spotlight? - John

On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 13:41:28 -0500, Sara Garland wrote (in article <1h14wiy.1q8n9u0wtq4acN%no_email_address@hotmail.com>): > I use SuperDuper! to clone my internal HD. It's easy enough to stop > Spotlight from indexing a particular drive, BUT the block has to be > applied each time I re-clone the drive. > > Not only that, but if I launch from the cloned external drive, it tries > to index the internal drive! And blocking this only works until the > internal drive gets backed up again! > > Very frustrating! > > Is there a simple, easy way to (a) keep Spotlight going on my internal > drive, but (b) make sure it doesn't try to index my external drive (or > try indexing the internal when I boot from the external)? > > Or am I doomed to constantly have to manually turn off Spotlight? I'm also a SuperDuper! user and was frustrated with Spotlight indexing my backup drives. The best I've been able to do is to use a modified version of the AppleScript provided by Shirt-Pocket. What I do is to prefix and suffix the AppleScript with the instructions to mount the target drive in the prefix and eject the target in the suffix. -- James L. Ryan -- TaliesinSoft

Sara Garland <no_email_address@hotmail.com> wrote: > I use SuperDuper! to clone my internal HD. It's easy enough to stop > Spotlight from indexing a particular drive, BUT the block has to be > applied each time I re-clone the drive. <http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=361>

In article <42FBAB03.8F9D4967@snet.net>, John Albert <j.albert@snet.net> wrote: > There are some folks who do not want ANYthing to do with Spotlight. For > reasons of our own, logical, reasonable, or otherwise, we want to DISABLE > Spotlight from mucking with our drives, and essentially remove all the > existing index files as well. Be careful what you wish for, and all that. Spotlight does more than search by content. It's now the search mechanism for a variety of things. Disable Spotlight and you can't even search for files by name in the Finder. -- Tom "Tom" Harrington Macaroni, Automated System Maintenance for Mac OS X. Version 2.0: Delocalize, Repair Permissions, lots more. See http://www.atomicbird.com/

John Albert <j.albert@snet.net> wrote: > We already have utilties that permit the user to disable journaling if > desired (for the record, I have journaling turned off on all my drives). > Why not something similar with which to control Spotlight? Because it's new. Tiger has been out for less than four months. In time, If Apple doesn't provide better controls, somebody else will. Apple picked the wrong default behavior: indexing should be off by default for everything but the startup disk. (BTW, I think it's silly to disable journaling. If it causes problems for some third-party disk utility, upgrade it.)

In article <1h14wiy.1q8n9u0wtq4acN%no_email_address@hotmail.com>, no_email_address@hotmail.com (Sara Garland) wrote: > I use SuperDuper! to clone my internal HD. It's easy enough to stop > Spotlight from indexing a particular drive, BUT the block has to be > applied each time I re-clone the drive. > > Not only that, but if I launch from the cloned external drive, it tries > to index the internal drive! And blocking this only works until the > internal drive gets backed up again! > > Very frustrating! > > Is there a simple, easy way to (a) keep Spotlight going on my internal > drive, but (b) make sure it doesn't try to index my external drive (or > try indexing the internal when I boot from the external)? > > Or am I doomed to constantly have to manually turn off Spotlight? Have you looked in the prefs? You can go in "privacy" and specify that which you don't want spotlight to index. Clik the "add" button in lower left and add that location, your backup drive. You can pick the entire drive or any portion there. -- Regards, JP "The measure of a man is what he will do while expecting that he will get nothing in return!"

Tom Harrington <tph@pcisys.no.spam.dammit.net> aszonygya: :Be careful what you wish for, and all that. Spotlight does more than :search by content. It's now the search mechanism for a variety of :things. Disable Spotlight and you can't even search for files by name :in the Finder. I am sure you are right but for my own purposes, Spotlight is a piece of junk, a totally misguided adventure. My biggest [and perhaps only] disappointment with the Mac since 1984. /PaulN

Neill Massello wrote (in article <1h14ypt.17yplbc1guntwuN%neillmassello@earthlink.net>): > Because it's new. Tiger has been out for less than four months. In time, > If Apple doesn't provide better controls, somebody else will. Apple > picked the wrong default behavior: indexing should be off by default for > everything but the startup disk. Close, it should allow you to "opt in" instead of opting out on a directory by directory basis. It would make searches faster, use less disk space, and be more likely to match people's behavior. You could attach any external device, and if you wanted it to be indexed by spotlight, you could tell it to, instead of rushing to tell it 'no'. -- _ __ _ | | ___ / _| |_ _ _ | | / _ \ |_| __| | | | | |__| __/ _| |_| |_| | |_____\___|_| \__|\__, | |___/

Jim Polaski <jpolaski@NOSPMync.net> wrote: > Have you looked in the prefs? You can go in "privacy" and specify that > which you don't want spotlight to index. Clik the "add" button in lower > left and add that location, your backup drive. You can pick the entire > drive or any portion there. Doing that writes to the volume that is to be ignored. I think it writes to the "_IndexPolicy.plist" in the ".Spotlight-V100" folder at the root level of the volume, but I'm not sure. In any case, when the OP does a full clone of her (Spotlight enabled) internal HD, the "do not index" flag gets overwritten. One way to avoid this is to filter on that ".Spotlight-V100" folder during a (non-cloning) backup so that it doesn't get replaced on the destination volume. Another way is to disable indexing on the destination volume after each backup, which is what David Nanian's script plug-in for his SuperDuper! application does.

Sara Garland wrote: > I use SuperDuper! to clone my internal HD. It's easy enough to stop > Spotlight from indexing a particular drive, BUT the block has to be > applied each time I re-clone the drive. > > Not only that, but if I launch from the cloned external drive, it tries > to index the internal drive! And blocking this only works until the > internal drive gets backed up again! > > Very frustrating! > > Is there a simple, easy way to (a) keep Spotlight going on my internal > drive, but (b) make sure it doesn't try to index my external drive (or > try indexing the internal when I boot from the external)? > > Or am I doomed to constantly have to manually turn off Spotlight? Yes, you are doomed. This is not your OS, it's SJ's and you can't customize it, at least not via the GUI. Locked in to expensive h/w, proprietary s/w from Apple that can't be modified. I'd be pretty pissed if I were you. Nicolas

In article <jpolaski-09F078.19232011082005@netnews.comcast.net>, Jim Polaski <jpolaski@NOSPMync.net> wrote: >In article <1h14wiy.1q8n9u0wtq4acN%no_email_address@hotmail.com>, > no_email_address@hotmail.com (Sara Garland) wrote: > >> I use SuperDuper! to clone my internal HD. It's easy enough to stop >> Spotlight from indexing a particular drive, BUT the block has to be >> applied each time I re-clone the drive. >> >> Not only that, but if I launch from the cloned external drive, it tries >> to index the internal drive! And blocking this only works until the >> internal drive gets backed up again! >> >> Very frustrating! >> >> Is there a simple, easy way to (a) keep Spotlight going on my internal >> drive, but (b) make sure it doesn't try to index my external drive (or >> try indexing the internal when I boot from the external)? >> >> Or am I doomed to constantly have to manually turn off Spotlight? > >Have you looked in the prefs? You can go in "privacy" and specify that >which you don't want spotlight to index. Clik the "add" button in lower >left and add that location, your backup drive. You can pick the entire >drive or any portion there. I'd like to do it the other way around. In Panther if I clicked on an FTP link in Safari, I'd get logged into that volume via the Finder and I could then navigate the remote site and pick a folder there, choose to Get Information and then select Index and have the remote site indexed for future searches. With Panther and Spotlight, that ability has gone away.

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 (19:23 -0500 UTC) Jim Polaski wrote: > In article <1h14wiy.1q8n9u0wtq4acN%no_email_address@hotmail.com>, > no_email_address@hotmail.com (Sara Garland) wrote: > > > I use SuperDuper! to clone my internal HD. It's easy enough to stop > > Spotlight from indexing a particular drive, BUT the block has to be > > applied each time I re-clone the drive. > > > > Not only that, but if I launch from the cloned external drive, it tries > > to index the internal drive! And blocking this only works until the > > internal drive gets backed up again! > > > > Very frustrating! > > > > Is there a simple, easy way to (a) keep Spotlight going on my internal > > drive, but (b) make sure it doesn't try to index my external drive (or > > try indexing the internal when I boot from the external)? > > > > Or am I doomed to constantly have to manually turn off Spotlight? > > Have you looked in the prefs? You can go in "privacy" and specify that > which you don't want spotlight to index. Clik the "add" button in lower > left and add that location, your backup drive. You can pick the entire > drive or any portion there. I believe a backup drive is a special case. When you make the backup, you may copy the files to that drive which govern the metadate configuration for your internal drive. The OS will read these and apply them to the backup--turning on the indexing. I beleieve this makes sense because you want drive privacy to stay with the drive rather than to be stored only on one main computer. The original question about indexing being off on a clone can be answered by a wrapper that 1. Excludes the spotlight/metadata files on the master from the backup set. 2. Turns indexing off for the backup volume. 3. Runs the backup. 4. Turns indexing off for the backup volume (for good measure). That is what I do with a self-modified version of psync, and I have used one of the backup images to restore my system, so I believe it works, -- oK+++ Hey! Barbie IS TOO an educational toy! From Barbie, you learn that you should only ever buy stretch clothes and even then it takes someone else a lot of work to pull the stretch pants up over your weirdly pointy feet. -James "Kibo" Parry, in alt.religion.kibology 10:04 up 2 days, 10:32, 1 user, load averages: 0.00 0.04 0.08

Neill Massello <neillmassello@earthlink.net> wrote: > Sara Garland <no_email_address@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > I use SuperDuper! to clone my internal HD. It's easy enough to stop > > Spotlight from indexing a particular drive, BUT the block has to be > > applied each time I re-clone the drive. > > <http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=361> I seriously owe you one, Neil. Thanks!!!