Aqua Taskforce

abitgone wrote on November 11, 2008, 12:44pm

You can just add the volume to the Spotlight preferences window so that it won't index that location.

polycat33 wrote on November 12, 2008, 7:46am

Isn't this already an option? In the Spotlight prefpane, go to the privacy tab, "prevent spotlight from searching these locations." Click the plus in the lower left to add a location.

MicrowaveDave wrote on November 12, 2008, 12:37pm

As usual, people can't read. mojo2012 want to automatically exclude new volumes from indexing. He doesn't want to have to manually add every single volume he ever plugs into his computer to Spotlight's ignore list. Computers are supposed to make life EASIER, not more complicated.

Some people who work in agencies deal with hundreds of clients, many of whom submit files on flash drives or USB hard disks. If I just want one file off a USB drive, why should the computer index the entire drive? And, why should I have to manually add the drive to Spotlight's ignore list every single time I plug in a new drive? Spotlight adds an index to every drive, I DON'T WANT MY COMPUTER CREATING AN INDEX ON ALL MY CLIENT'S DRIVES!!! They don't want it either. It's extremely rude to go about modifying people's hard drives and flash drives without their permission. I don't want Spotlight indexes on my digital camera's SD card either, butadding the drive to Ignore list DOESN'T WORK because each time my camera reformats the SD card, Spotlight's starts re-indexing it anyway!!!

One could almost say Spotlight is a virus, because it creates unwated files without a user's permission and there's no way to turn it off.

abitgone wrote on December 2, 2008, 10:55am

...except that you can actually disable Spotlight.

MicrowaveDave wrote on December 4, 2008, 4:29pm

The trouble is if you disable Spotlight completely, you lose ALL search functionality on your Mac. You can't even search for file names. Some software doesn't even function at all if I disable Spotlight completely because it relies on Spotlight for some of its functionality. Disabling it is not a workable option, and because Apple deliberately removed Find File, the Finder can't actually find files without Spotlight.

OS 8 had a basic version of Spotlight, something most people seem to forget (or simply never knew about). Find File had a 'Search by Content' category. You could turn on indexing and it would index files while the computer was idle. It worked well but for some reason was never advertised so there weren't many plug-ins for common files. The difference was, you weren't FORCED to use indexing like you are with Spotlight. You had to manually add new volumes to the indexing list so it never created an index without your permission. It actually worked BETTER than Spotlight because it could actually index CDs and read-only media if you added them to the list, and the index was stored on your boot volume so it didn't take up valuable space on removable media. I never had a use for it back then, and still have no use for it, so being forced to use it is extremely frustrating.