Spotlight Indexing Of External Drives Not Working In Monterey

[mikey8811]

Hi

Am having an issue with Spotlight and finder not indexing files on external USB HD's.

Before on Big Sur, you could initiate a reindexing by adding and removing said drive in the Privacy tab under Spotlight in System Preferences.

Now when you do that, nothing happens.

Anybody else experience this and what is the fix?

Thanks

 

[twoohfour]

Also having this problem, did you fix it?

 

[mikey8811]

Nope unfortunately not.

It's a bug but the last bug I reported to Apple Care still hasn't been fixed.

They are pretty clueless

 

[htmanning]

I am also having this issue. I've tried everything including turning on indexing in Terminal and adding the drive to the Privacy tab and removing it, but it will NOT index the external drive. Catalina and Big Sur were indexing it just fine. It seems to be a Monterey issue.

Terminal output:

sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/External/


/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/External:


Indexing and searching disabled.


SOLUTION:

I viewed hidden files on the external drive and found a file:

.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs

I deleted the file in finder, then ejected the drive. When I re-mounted the drive I ran this and it worked:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

 

[mikey8811]

I am also having this issue. I've tried everything including turning on indexing in Terminal and adding the drive to the Privacy tab and removing it, but it will NOT index the external drive. Catalina and Big Sur were indexing it just fine. It seems to be a Monterey issue.

Terminal output:

sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/External/


/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/External:


Indexing and searching disabled.


SOLUTION:

I viewed hidden files on the external drive and found a file:

.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs

I deleted the file in finder, then ejected the drive. When I re-mounted the drive I ran this and it worked:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Thanks for posting a solution. I could not find the file you were referring to.

Where did you find the file

.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs

on the external drive?

It wasn't in the root directory of the external drive.

There was a hidden Spotlight folder but I could not access it as it said I did not have the permissions to.

Also, I encountered a different error when trying to add the external drive to Privacy in Spotlight System Preferences. This time there was an error message and I was unable to add the drive.

Before, I could add and remove it but it wouldn't make a difference.

Thanks

 

[ARMunix]

Today I ran into problems with Spotlight not finding some files on an external SSD on a brand new M1 Mac mini.

The files/folders that caused problems had different permissions set. I changed the permissions and then they turned up in Spotlight immediately. Try setting read & write permissions for your user and read only for staff and everyone, no additional permissions.

 

[mikey8811]

Today I ran into problems with Spotlight not finding some files on an external SSD on a brand new M1 Mac mini.

The files/folders that caused problems had different permissions set. I changed the permissions and then they turned up in Spotlight immediately. Try setting read & write permissions for your user and read only for staff and everyone, no additional permissions.

Where do you set the permissions? For the entire drive?

Also, are you able to add and remove the drive from Privacy under Spotlight Preferences and have indexing run on it?

 

[ARMunix]

Where do you set the permissions? For the entire drive?

Also, are you able to add and remove the drive from Privacy under Spotlight Preferences and have indexing run on it?

Yes, I set the permissions recursively for the entire drive.

I was also able to add and remove the drive from Privacy, but that didn't change anything.

 

[JakeFantom]

This issue has been plaguing me for months. I could run disk first aid on the drive, then add it/remove it from Spotlight privacy. And that fix would work for about ten minutes before I had to repeat the process. Then I realized this was happening exclusively to Seagate external drives, and added Seagate to my search for help. Fortunately, this brought up a post about simply downloading the Seagate utility (NTFS_for_Mac.dmg) from Seagate's website. Installing that utility and making sure "spotlight indexing" was checked seems to have solved the problem. I highly recommend trying this free solution if you're having issues with Seagate drives.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

Where do you set the permissions? For the entire drive?

Here's how to set the permissions for an entire non-boot drive (this won't work for the boot drive):

• In the Finder, do a Get Info on the drive.
• At the bottom right corner of the Get Info window, in the "Sharing & Permissions" section, click the lock icon and enter your system password.
• At the bottom left corner of the Get Info window, in the toolbar that appears there, click on the + symbol.
• In the popup that appears, select your username.
• Your username will now appear in the "Name" column of "Sharing & Permissions", but by default it may appear in the "Privilege" column as "Read Only". If it is, click on "Read Only", and from the popup that appears, select "Read & Write".
• In the toolbar at the lower left corner of the Get Info window, click on the rightmost "Action" tool, which contains a downward-pointing caret.
• In the popup that appears, select "Apply to enclosed items".