spotlight indexing normal?

[silverblack]

When and how often does Spotlight index a drive?

After 1-1/2 months of owning my MBA, Spotlight is indexing my drive today. I don't know if it is doing it for the first time. But it is the first time I noticed it, as it is slowing down everything, and is taking forever (~ 1-2 min for every 1%).

I would have thought my drive would be all indexed by now -- 90+ days of owning it.

I wonder if it has anything to do with what I am doing on my computer today, that may have trigger this. I copied 3 dvd movie files over and was ripping them with Handbrake today to get ready for a trip next week. I also connected an external drive to have it re-formated. However, after all the ripping was done, and external drive removed. It is still indexing at the moment (2 more hours to go according to the progress bar).

I am tempted to restart the computer, and stop the indexing. But then I shouldn't, if it's a part of the normal routine.

 

[iSee]

I noticed that mine will reindex if a crash the computer. That kind of makes sense (like yesterday I ran my battery down to zero, woke the computer back up and ran it until the battery died. After plugging in and restarted, spotlight started indexing again.

It will also reindex of an external drives that it thinks might have been changed when it wasn't being monitored. I'm not exactly sure how it determines when an unmonitored change might have happened.

A while back I occasionally had issues with the Spotlight indexer spinning indefinitely. That seems to have been fixed--at least it never happens to me anymore. But maybe it is happening to you. Rebooting won't hurt.

If the indexer starts up again, you can probably assume it needs it.

 

[silverblack]

I did have a Kernel Panic today, so that's probably why it's re-indexing then.