Purpose of Spotlight indexing Time Machine??

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Hi,

Just wondering what the purpose of Spotlight indexing Time Machine is?

I've never experienced this before, but today, after backing up my machine, it started "indexing" and took about three hours to get half-way through before I gave up (my Mac has a tendency to shut itself off when overheating and it kept doing it, which is why I gave up).

Because of the issue with my Mac, I am constantly backing my machine up and am planning on getting a new Mac soon and transferring the data over. So I'm just wondering whether aborting the indexing will affect my files on my external hard drive in any way?

Many thanks in advance.
 
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The way i understand it, is spotlight indexes your backup, because if you need to use spotlight to find a file within your TM backup, then spotlight has indexed it all so its easy to find.
In a nutshell thats it.
I won't affect your files, will only affect you finding them

HTH

Cheers
 
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Ahhh, that's what I thought but just wanted to make sure. Well thanks for the clarification. I won't bother letting it index as I only need it to backup files in case anything happens to the hard drive.

While we're on the subject, can anyone tell me - if I get a new Mac can I simply connect the hard drive with Time Machine to it and revert to the latest backup? Would this not overwrite a lot of the preinstalled files on the new Mac?

Also, would the following be automatically restored:

a) My software (ie Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc)
b) iTunes ratings and play counts
c) MacMail email history (ie inbox, sent messages, and email accounts)

Thanks again for the help!
 

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