[Clive]

Am I completely missing something, or is "Spotlight" unable to complete a simple task like finding files, without first indexing the entire disk?

For a start I don't want it indexing content of files - I really don't need to find all the examples of .html in my email if I'm looking for a file called .html, do I?

But, it seems to indicate that you can't search a mounted drive from a server, external disk, CD, etc!?

Does someone test this stuff?


-- Clive

“Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy…”

[chadseld]

From the Finder, choose 'Find...' from the File menu. (Maybe they should rename the Finder this is getting confusing) Then you can play with search options.

If you want to find by file name then use something like Name Contains or Name Is...

[Clive]

I got that far :-)

But what I'm saying is - you cannot "Find" with "Name" contains or anything else unless you've let Spotlight index the disk.

As far as I can see this is practically useless, because it means you cannot search a server mounted disk etc.

For instance, if you try to select a mounted disk to search in, you'll find that you cannot target it.

Or is it just me?

[chadseld]

That's a very good point. I don't mount large disks that often so I never noticed. I wonder if the old search is still hanging out under the hood. If so, someone should write a small utility to access it.

Until then, you can try the unix command find. I.E. >find /Users/me/Documents -name '*.html' -print

[mAxximo]

This ridiculous bug has been reported by me and others before. 10.4.1 didn't fix it, hopefully 10.4.2 will.

[Clive]

Ok, I'll bug it directly with Apple, I thought it might just be me.

[Apfhex]

I can search a mounted drive from a Windows machine just fine (and 10 times faster than Windows can search it itself). Haven't had the opportunity to try to search another Mac drive on a network from mine with Tiger...