02-19-2010, 08:48 PM

i turned off my macbook and plugged out my USB harddrive (after having both the HDD and Macbook on for more than 5 days while i format and DBAN my windows desktop)

And then i turned my macbook back on, it loads everything up as it should..

but when i try to use spotlight to start an application its tell me
"its indexing, and it will take 10 minutes"

i am running OSX 10.5.8

So im just curious as to what this indexing actually is?

im new to mac, and a bit of a newbie to computer science.


thanx in advance

02-19-2010, 10:39 PM

In a nutshell to my knowledge is its basically doing just that.
Indexing ...
Its is sorting through every document, webserch, file and folder and indexing them so when you do a search through spotlight, it comes up with the quickest and most appropriate answer for you. Its basically sorting out a dictionary and putting everything in order to get the quickest results.
Dictionary
index |ˈinˌdeks|
noun ( pl. -dexes or esp. in technical use -dices |-dəˌsēz|)
1 an alphabetical list of names, subjects, etc., with references to the places where they occur, typically found at the end of a book.
• an alphabetical list by title, subject, author, or other category of a collection of books or documents, e.g., in a library.
• Computing a set of items each of which specifies one of the records of a file and contains information about its address.

I use MainMenu to do a system clean and uncheck Indexing Spotlight. It isnt necessary but if i need to use the system after i have done my clean i dont need to wait 10mins for it to index everything, as everything i do spotlight index's on the go

Hope it helps some

Cheers