07-15-2011, 07:40 AM

Hi, newbie here. Been al around the web looking for an answer to this one...

I have a WD Network Drive, I can access it fine, it's there in the sidebar of Finder but I can't seem to search it for particular files etc. (I click on it, then click on 'shared' folder on the WD and type a file name in the search field, but when hitting return 'Searching This Mac' is displayed), any ideas please, I've pasted below some info that was on here from a long time ago by the looks of it but I need a more step by step explanation of the process, thanks in advance for any help with this issue, best wishes, Phil.


USE THE TERMINAL OPTION mdutil.
It has a switch, -i, to enable indexing on a volume. So I just went ahead as root (sudo bash) and ran:
sudo bash. (my network drive example is named "ldm" so replace ldm by your network drive name)
mdutil /Volumes/ldm -i on
Then I checked the status with
mdutil /Volumes/ldm -s
And, behold ... I got back the following:
/Volumes/ldm/:
Status: Indexing Enabled

A second later, the Spotlight Icon started pulsating. Half an hour later, it stopped. I went to a Finder window, typed a query, and selected the network volume ldm. To my delight, matches were coming back instantaneously on files deep down in the file hierarchy on that volume. I have not checked whether newly added files are indexed on the fly, too, and I do not know where the .Spotlight-V100 file is stored (not in the root of the volume in question it seems).

I thought that others may give it a try to confirm whether this is working as expected. The volume I tested this with was an AFP volume served via NETATALK (v. 2.0.2) by my Linux server (a x86 debian box). Unfortunately, it appears to fail with SAMBA. I have not checked NFS. One caveat: you must rerun the mdutil command each time the volume is mounted.

Hope it helps someone!

07-15-2011, 08:00 AM

Originally Posted by philbeckett

Hi, newbie here. Been al around the web looking for an answer to this one...

I have a WD Network Drive, I can access it fine, it's there in the sidebar of Finder but I can't seem to search it for particular files etc. (I click on it, then click on 'shared' folder on the WD and type a file name in the search field, but when hitting return 'Searching This Mac' is displayed), any ideas please, I've pasted below some info that was on here from a long time ago by the looks of it but I need a more step by step explanation of the process, thanks in advance for any help with this issue, best wishes, Phil.

For the sake of clarity, here's a link to the actual posting of the tip the OP referenced:
Indexing a network drive with Spotlight

Rather than bothering with trying to force Spotlight to index a network drive, especially considering you have to re-do it each time it's mounted, try using EasyFind. It's a GREAT tool and superior to Spotlight in some ways.

07-15-2011, 08:55 AM

Just using it now, I'll let you know if it works for me, thanks again, Phil.