01-20-2011, 05:58 AM

I've recently moved from a PC to an iMac and as I always kept my data files on a separate drive in my PC I made a copy of its contents onto a new external drive for my Mac. I intended to use ChronoSync to synchronize the 2 drives, however Windows 7 file permissions are a complete nightmare and I couldn’t get some folders to synchronize and decided to use DropBox instead.

I have my iMac with an external drive attached via a USB cable where I store all my data files. I want to be able to search the drive each day to check which files I have created and or modified so I can them add them to my DropBox account and copy them to my old PC data drive so it acts as a backup.

I know how to search for the files using the Finder, however the problem I have is it doesn’t find them because it hasn't been re-indexed recently.

I’ve used the following commands in Terminal to force re-indexing:
sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo mdutil -E /
sudo mdutil -i on /

However it doesn’t update the external drive. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with what this code means but I'm guessing it doesn’t include external drives.

Can anyone tell me the simplest way to re-index an external drive and presumably this will need to be done daily or is there a way to automate daily re-indexing?

01-20-2011, 12:26 PM

Can anyone tell me the simplest way to re-index an external drive and presumably this will need to be done daily or is there a way to automate daily re-indexing?

This article refers to OS X Tiger but is still applicable for Leopard and Snow Leopard. Just follow the author's directions: LINK

01-20-2011, 03:19 PM

Thanks chscag, I found if I dragged the drive icon it went up in one of those "puff of smoke" Mac animations and got removed from the finder.

Instead I've used the + key to add it left it 5 seconds and then used the - key to remove it.

I'm not seeing any drive activity yet, so I'll wait until the morning and see if it worked.

01-21-2011, 05:03 AM

I ran my search this morning and unfortunately it didn't find anything so it looks like re-indexing failed.

Looks like I'll have to attach the drive to my PC and search it on there, what a retrograde move!