Spotlight not indexing external drive - old problem

After trying to find an answer to Spotlight on my MBP not indexing an external drive it would seem from this community that this problem is not a new one.

I'm running MacOS Ventura with a APFS formatted LaCie external drive and have gone through all the permutations of changing permissions of the drive. I have forced the Mac to start the indexing procedure by adding and removing a drive from the privacy pane of Spotlight in Settings but on completion it doesn't remember what it has just taken ages to do.

I haven't bothered with terminal commands as it would seem from others who have tried it that it doesn't solve the problem either.

Reading elsewhere on the Apple Community it may be a file with corrupt metadata causing the Spotlight problem (not too convinced of this). It may however be worth turning off individual search locations to try to home in where the problem may lie if corrupt metadata can indeed cause Spotlight to fail its indexing.

I have in fact three drives (although one is reserved for Time Machine backups and will not be included in Spotlight) and each fails so it must be a wider problem than a file with corrupt metadata. If someone knows more on this subject please step forward but please do not repeat a procedure I have already tried.