Comments on: Stop Spotlight from Indexing Time Machine Backup Volumes & External Drives

By: John

John — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:13:11 +0000

Yes, same message on Mountain Lion 10.8.2
I gather this means that Spotlight has to be allowed to index TimeMachine backups. Disabling this via terminal might be unwise.

By: Clint Modien

Clint Modien — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 00:25:10 +0000

Wanted to drop a hint… if you get an error saying that you cannot resolve path /Volumes/TimeMachine … you need to run the command with sudo… (e.g. sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/TimeMachine)

By: Adele

Adele — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 06:51:48 +0000

Ok, so I have disabled the indexing function of spotlight on my external hard drive but surely I should still be able to search that hard drive for something or I am being thick here.. does indexing =searching?

By: jeff6times7

jeff6times7 — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:03:27 +0000

You cannot disable indexing of Time Machine backup locations in Lion. The commands you mention just don’t work. Well, at least when the backup location is an external drive like my USB drive.

I tried disabling indexing system wide and got a backup error shortly thereafter. Not sure if one caused the other.

By: iGnome

iGnome — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:54:07 +0000

Great tip, Shame there could not be footnote on the privacy page within Spotlight preferences to make it obvious that this was the way to do it because I did look there before googling for this answer. All they need to do is add two words so that it reads “Prevent Spotlight from searching OR INDEXING these locations”

By: Colby

Colby — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:20:45 +0000

Yup same message for me but it stops indexing the same

By: landoncube

landoncube — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:34:55 +0000

When I drop the external hdd Mac mini Time Machine into the Privacy tab of Spotlight, I get the message:

“Mac mini Time Machine” is a Time Machine backup.
Spotlight will continue to search Time Machine backups but will not search other items on the disk.