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Spotlight Index TM drive? Yay or nay.

Not while the first backup is happening. Later: sure. Why not?

That 'mds' process can really take a lot of time and CPU and disk grinding. I just wonder if TM will work properly without it.

I don't think it affects the process and I don't ever recall a Time Machine disk in any Spotlight search. Maybe it's a waste of time.

Yea -- though if you're in a hurry for that first backup to finish, you can turn it off during the initial backup.

Here's why Spotlight indexes Time Machine.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11168

It doesn't really provide any info on the "why" and again, I have yet to see Time Machine show up in a search. I do have those disks included in the indexing, so I'm not disagreeing. I just don't see their rationale except because "we say so."

If the Spotlight index is only used when a user invokes "Find" them it doesn't necessarily follow that that same index would be of any additional help in restoring a disk, especially if the index is stored on the current boot disk.

What part of that don't I get? I don't even see how the index helps in TM. if I already know where to look. I've never even thought of looking for a Find feature when entering TM.

So if I access TM for an older file through the Finder, I'll find it only if TM has been indexed? Thanks for the replies, I wouldn't have brought this up here if I didn't find what I was looking for on the Google. The whole reason that I started this thread is because I am dual booting on Snow Leopard and Mavericks. For some incomprehensible reason, every time I re-boot after running my Mavericks volume (which is NOT TM enabled), my SN volume re-indexes the TM backup. I have Apple junkie friends that assure me that I can turn the indexing off, but I'm not so sure.

There is the Find Any File app which is much faster, AFAIK, and doesn't require indexing to work. It should work with TM.

I love "Find any file", but that's just it- I'm not trying to find the file, just back it up, and does Spotlight really have anything to do with it, or is it just wasted resources?

The link tells you how to find a file in Time Machine if you have deleted it or otherwise "lost" it on your system drives. You can go into TM and do a search. Really. I guess that was obvious only to me.

You can't search TM from Finder. If you don't allow the disk be indexed, you can't search it at all apparently.