External HD not indexing in spotlight with Monterey upgrade

[ItsAShaunParty]

This question was posed a bit ago. There were a few answers but these answers didn't work -- so I'm asking again...

Ever since my Monterey upgrade, one drive won't index. I tried to add/remove it from Privacy in Spotlight -- nothing.
The same drive also shows errors when I try to copy large folders to it. My other drives don't have this issue.

Any ideas? Is the drive failing or does it need formatting or a permissions setting or....?

Thanks!

 

[DeltaMac]

What format is used on that external drive?

 

[ItsAShaunParty]

What format is used on that external drive?

Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

The ones that are working are APFS... Oh no, is that the culprit? How do I fix it?

 

[DeltaMac]

If you can't get the drive to index (and spotlight does not allow searching on the drive), the format should allow the indexing.
I can recommend that you try erasing the drive. You will want to make sure that you have the drive backed up first, then erase with Disk Utility. Standard Mac OS Extended (journaled) should work fine with Spotlight, even if your other drives are APFS. And restore with whatever you were storing on that drive.
I would not format as APFS -- unless the drive is an SSD

 

[george_i]

It seems that the metadata indexing on the disk is disabled.
Please try this to enable it:
1. Add/remove the disk.
2. Run the command· sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/disk name. You should see "Indexing enabled".
3. Test.

 

[ItsAShaunParty]

It seems that the metadata indexing on the disk is disabled.
Please try this to enable it:
1. Add/remove the disk.
2. Run the command· sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/disk name. You should see "Indexing enabled".
3. Test.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

I really appreciate this!

 

[ItsAShaunParty]

It seems that the metadata indexing on the disk is disabled.
Please try this to enable it:
1. Add/remove the disk.
2. Run the command· sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/disk name. You should see "Indexing enabled".
3. Test.

I restarted my computer and indexing is no longer working on that drive. I tried the command again and received this:

Error: unable to perform operation. (-400)
Error: unknown indexing state.

Thoughts?

 

[DeltaMac]

Run Disk Utility/First Aid on that drive. Any errors there?

Disable indexing. Eject the drive, then re-mount. Then re-enable indexing.

 

[ItsAShaunParty]

Run Disk Utility/First Aid on that drive. Any errors there?

Disable indexing. Eject the drive, then re-mount. Then re-enable indexing.

Did the trick. Just needed first aid. Thanks -- I was getting worked up over nothing.

Though, is this a sign to replace the drive?

 

[george_i]

Though, is this a sign to replace the drive?

It's a good idea to replace the drive.

 

[DaveFlash]

i have the same problem, diskaid does not show any problems, and it's an ssd formatted in APFS.

when I disabled it, it spat out this:

mdutil disabling Spotlight: /System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/SuperSpeedDrive2TB -> kMDConfigSearchLevelFSSearchOnly


Indexing disabled.

now spotlight is re-indexing again after remounting and re-indexing it per above command