Why can't Spotlight or Finder search the external hard drive on Mac?

[Simon.RL]

The inability to do so doesn't necessarily indicate a malfunctioning external hard drive. Instead, it could be due to the external hard drive not being indexed by Spotlight, permission issues with the device, or the device being formatted with the NTFS file system.

Solution 1. Reindex the external hard drive
On macOS Ventura:

1. Open System Settings.
2. Select "Siri & Spotlight."
3. Click "Spotlight Privacy."
4. Drag and drop the disk icon of the external hard drive from your desktop to the privacy list.
   
5. Reenable Spotlight to index the problematic external hard drive
6. Click Done.
7. Select "Spotlight Privacy" again.
8. Highlight the external drive and click the ( - ) icon to remove it.
9. Click Done.
   

On macOS Monterey or earlier:

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Click Spotlight.
3. Select the Privacy tab.
4. Drag and drop the external drive's disk icon from your desktop to the privacy list.
5. Highlight the disk icon in the list and click the ( - ) button.

After going through these steps, Spotlight will reindex the content of your external drive, allowing Finder to search its files. The indexing process may need some time, depending on the amount of data you have on the drive. You can press Command + Space bar to call out Spotlight and type a random thing to reveal the status bar. If you see the status bar, the process is still ongoing. Wait until the indexing is complete, then retry searching files from the drive.


Solution 2. Force Spotlight to reindex your drive

Solution 3. Change the drive's permission

Solution 4. Use NTFS for Mac
( detailed steps )

 

[pm-r]

Solution 1. Reindex the external hard drive
On macOS Ventura:

Welcome to the mac-forums.com forums, but unless Ventura has changed the spotlight re-indexing feature the instructions you provided are rather confusing and erroneous as well for the subject provided, or my apologies if I misread or misunderstood it:
Solution 1. Reindex the external hard drive
On macOS Ventura:

You might want to edit your post with correct directions or delete the whole thing or at least maybe provide a link to Apple's site and their method and directions such as this:

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support (CA)

If you get unexpected results when searching your Mac, rebuilding the Spotlight index might help.

support.apple.com

- Patrick
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