hope i'm not appearing obtuse, l selected the privacy tab as in screen shot and tried searching the external drive, and it doesn't work
is this what you meant by selecting privacy in spot light pane ?
The screenshots you posted at that time don't show the Privacy tab. You won't be able to see or change the privacy setting for a drive unless the Privacy tab is active. So based on what you posted, it seemed like you weren't looking in the right place (Privacy tab), even though that was covered in the linked article.
Once Privacy is active, a drive with Spotlight disabled should appear in the list. In the most recent screenshot you posted, nothing appears in that list, so nothing has Spotlight disabled. In theory.
In reality, sometimes Spotlight can be disabled on a drive, and that drive still doesn't appear in Spotlight's Privacy list. When that happens, the first suggestion is to add the drive to the Privacy list, wait a minute, then remove it from the Privacy list. Adding it to the list disables the Spotlight index and search, and removing it from the list tells Spotlight to index and search the drive.
After removing the drive from the Privacy list, Spotlight should begin indexing the drive. This will take some time. Spotlight may show that it's indexing by displaying an indicator in its menubar status item. Or it may not. The 1st screenshot in the article shows the status display in 2017.
There's also a heading in the article "Force Spotlight to Re-index a Volume". It was written in 2017, so it may not apply in 2019.
