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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Indexing Macintosh HD

Danny_Pulsar - May 1, 2006 - 1:12 pm

I searched Apple's site, searched the net but I can not find out anything about indexing Macintosh HD.

This morning when I came into work this process was running on my Powermac G4. (I didn't start it) It took a really long time (hours) and I let it finish. Afterwards, I ran Norton Systemworks speed disk to defragment the "light" fragmentation. The mac's been running a little sluggish lately.

What is indexing the macintosh HD and why can't I find anything about it anywhere?

Thanks.

Dan--Ft. Lauderdale
Powermac G4, 512mb RAM, single 900mhz proc. 60gb HD.

Thunderthud - May 1, 2006 - 3:20 pm

Indexing the hard drive is something that Spotlight does to be able to better provide search results in a timely fashion. In a nutshell it is a process whereby an index of the files on your drive, like an index of topics in a book, is created so that Spotlight can search the index rather than the drive directory each time you ask it to find something.

It initially scans your hard drive and then periodically updates. These updates are generally done when the machine is (relatively) idle. You just caught it in the act.

Danny_Pulsar - May 1, 2006 - 3:42 pm

Thanks for the update. But what is spotlight? Is that like Sherlock?

Thunderthud - May 1, 2006 - 4:31 pm

Yes, sorry. I didn't notice that you are still using OS 9. Spotlight is OS X's replacement for Sherlock. I'm not sure but I think you can actually turn off Sherlock's indexing. Google "(stop) sherlock indexing".