"Save" time longer with Spotlight (bye bye Spotlight!)

[mrbillet]

Wow, Spotlight does hit the CPU hard.

I'd never messed with it until reading this thread. I placed my System HD in the Privacy section, realized I wasn't really having a problem to begin with, then took it out of Spotlight Privacy. My CPU Menu Meters are solid with activity as Spotlight indexes everything again.

I'll just leave it on as I haven't noticed any issues with it before. Haven't had any serious projects for a while, so its fine for everyday messing around.

I can see how it could be a real pain if you need a super optimized system that can't afford these kind of slowdowns.

-Ian

[KEVORKIAN]

That's really odd... I have never noticed it doing anything. I must be blind or these SSD's are so fast I don't notice it working in the background... either way, I've never thought twice about it... or make that even once!

Same here. It's never given me trouble.

[bongo_x]

My main problem with Spotlight is just the inconvenient times it chooses to index. Like every time I plug in my backup drive. Since it's a clone I guess it always thinks it's new and immediately starts indexing like crazy.

Also when I plug in a drive I just want to look at quickly and may never look at again. I have to go and put it on the exclude list. Pretty silly.

bb

[KEVORKIAN]

My main problem with Spotlight is just the inconvenient times it chooses to index. Like every time I plug in my backup drive. Since it's a clone I guess it always thinks it's new and immediately starts indexing like crazy.

Also when I plug in a drive I just want to look at quickly and may never look at again. I have to go and put it on the exclude list. Pretty silly.

bb

Since you generally only have a somewhat static amount of drives around it's pretty easy to exclude them in System Preferences. The settings are remembered too. I keep all of my Cloned drives and backup volumes excluded.

I have drives and usb keys sent to me all the time and I just grab the files from them and eject them before Spotlight is done or I can simply exclude them. It's Pretty painless to me.

I use Spotlight for searching all the time so I can't imagine living without it, but I can understand the concern I suppose. If you can live without it (EasyFind is pretty good if I recall) then you might as well turn it off.

[bongo_x]

My main problem with Spotlight is just the inconvenient times it chooses to index. Like every time I plug in my backup drive. Since it's a clone I guess it always thinks it's new and immediately starts indexing like crazy.

Also when I plug in a drive I just want to look at quickly and may never look at again. I have to go and put it on the exclude list. Pretty silly.

bb

Since you generally only have a somewhat static amount of drives around it's pretty easy to exclude them in System Preferences. The settings are remembered too. I keep all of my Cloned drives and backup volumes excluded.

I have drives and usb keys sent to me all the time and I just grab the files from them and eject them before Spotlight is done or I can simply exclude them. It's Pretty painless to me.

I use Spotlight for searching all the time so I can't imagine living without it, but I can understand the concern I suppose. If you can live without it (EasyFind is pretty good if I recall) then you might as well turn it off.

My clones get reset in the Spotlight "exclude" list every time I clone, so it does the whole drive again every time I plug them in.

If I get a drive full of music files I'm never going to search it. Why can't Spotlight just have the optional behavior of asking you if you want to index drives when you plug them in? A very simple "what should spotlight do with new drives; ask, index, ignore" would solve a lot of problems. That and "don't index until there is X minutes of inactivity".

I appreciate the speed of Spotlight, I just wish it would be more discriminate about when it indexes. I search with it, but I don't do anything more than the old OS9 search did. I only look for file and folder names. I use EasyFInd sometimes but it is really slow, probably due to the size of my drives.

bb

[newrigel]

My main problem with Spotlight is just the inconvenient times it chooses to index. Like every time I plug in my backup drive. Since it's a clone I guess it always thinks it's new and immediately starts indexing like crazy.

Also when I plug in a drive I just want to look at quickly and may never look at again. I have to go and put it on the exclude list. Pretty silly.

bb

Since you generally only have a somewhat static amount of drives around it's pretty easy to exclude them in System Preferences. The settings are remembered too. I keep all of my Cloned drives and backup volumes excluded.

I have drives and usb keys sent to me all the time and I just grab the files from them and eject them before Spotlight is done or I can simply exclude them. It's Pretty painless to me.

I use Spotlight for searching all the time so I can't imagine living without it, but I can understand the concern I suppose. If you can live without it (EasyFind is pretty good if I recall) then you might as well turn it off.

My clones get reset in the Spotlight "exclude" list every time I clone, so it does the whole drive again every time I plug them in.

If I get a drive full of music files I'm never going to search it. Why can't Spotlight just have the optional behavior of asking you if you want to index drives when you plug them in? A very simple "what should spotlight do with new drives; ask, index, ignore" would solve a lot of problems. That and "don't index until there is X minutes of inactivity".

I appreciate the speed of Spotlight, I just wish it would be more discriminate about when it indexes. I search with it, but I don't do anything more than the old OS9 search did. I only look for file and folder names. I use EasyFInd sometimes but it is really slow, probably due to the size of my drives.

bb

It's for the convenience to search your system... not having it do so defeats it's purpose. If it's that big of a deal then disable it but when you need it you'll have to go through all the BS but I've never even had an issue with it. I don't connect ANY drives to my system (except my own) in case of malicious files but if your in that business I guess that's just what you have to deal with or turn it off. There's terminal commands you can use to be more specific on the indexing routines... just do a google search and there's information out there.

[amplidood]

It's funny. Every time I do a new install of Mac OS on a machine, I leave Spotlight alone at first. I figure starting fresh will allow it to work right and not pull the usual shenanigans. What I *have* noticed is that it's always more of a problem for laptops than towers. Who knows. Invariably after a couple of weeks, the computers that have it on will start having constant processor spikes, sluggishness, and fans (no hot chicks) just going nuts a few times a day. Pulling up Activity Monitor shows MDSworker and MDS just ramming the CPU. This happens whether there are a lot of drives hooked up or not. I've tried letting it go for a few more days to a week and the behaviour doesn't stop.

I don't know what Spotlight is getting tripped up on. Maybe it's a particular combination of other things running, I don't know. All I know is that fully disabling Spotlight makes the problem go away forever. On laptops it significantly increases battery life without all that constant background processing. The only benefit Spotlight has over any other kind of searching is the ability to search text inside of files. Very important for some, I understand. Searching with utilities that scan the actual directories is still very, very fast, so speed isn't a real benefit.

Again, this is just like every other issue people experience on this board. A problem for some, not a problem others ever notice.

[KEVORKIAN]

Man that's weird... My MacBook fans never come on unless I am looking at a Flash site.
I'll have to set up a CPU monitor in my menubar to look for any spikes but there is nothing noticeable happening. Battery life here is great as long as Airport is disabled when not in use.

Do the fans just come on by themselves when the machine is idling or is it in use?

[amplidood]

It's just the fans responding to the CPU being driven in the red for minutes at a time while Spotlight stumbles all over itself.

[bongo_x]

I've been using EasyFind as an alternative, I don't ever look for the contents of files. Is that the best choice? Is there a way to make it faster?

thanks
bb

[amplidood]

I've been using Path Finder for a long time, and its built in search is really fast. I *rarely* use the Finder anymore. EasyFind is cool, but PF may be faster. Here's what PF's Find looks like. Very powerful.

Path Finder search window

[bongo_x]

I played with PathFinder a few times over the years, but my Finder needs are pretty simple and I don't have a problem with Finder itself. Maybe I'll look at it again.

bb

[amplidood]

I played with PathFinder a few times over the years, but my Finder needs are pretty simple and I don't have a problem with Finder itself. Maybe I'll look at it again.
bb

I understand. My needs can get quite complex with all the web/design stuff I do on top of all music/audio. Here's why I use Path Finder in one picture... Try having instant access to that many places and that much info at once in the Finder. Can't be done. Indispensable for moving things around easily, too.

A normal day in Path Finder