re-index external drive

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Level 1

10 points

re-index external drive

Hi all

I've got a Samsung T7 external SSD. Spotlight now doesn't find anything on the drive. I can copy the name of a file that i can see in finder into spotlight, and it won't find it. Software (NI Battery 4 and other audio samplers) that use files on the drive suddenly can't see the files either. Despite them being there

I have tried reindexing the drive by adding to and removing from the privacy tab in spotlight preferences with no success

I would appreciate any advice

Best

Alex

Mac OS 11.6.7

Macbook M1 2020

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.5

Posted on Dec 12, 2022 02:07 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,245 points

Dec 12, 2022 01:32 PM in response to uplift123

Depending on external drives for running software is risky at best. Connectivity of external drives isn't guaranteed, and when you backup the data of the installation of the software on the external drive, you need to depend on yet another medium. If your internal drive does not have the storage to manage all your applications, it probably would be better to archive any non-essential data so it is off the internal drive, and keep two copies externally that are on different media.

Many applications are designed only to run off the boot drive.

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