[Max]

Recently, I began to experience a lot of performance problems (system unresponsiveness—both with and without SBBODs—and general slowdowns). I then began to check Activity Monitor, and noticed that mds was always near the top of its memory list (real and virtual); I also noticed that Spotlight—as bad as it usually is (oh, how I miss Sherlock!)—now often can't even find a simple document—even when I'm staring at it as it sits there staring back at me from my Documents folder! So, I guessed it might be time to force a reindexing.

I did so by adding/deleting my internal drive to/from Spotlight's privacy list. Sure enough, the reindexing began, and I let it run for about an hour. It was late, and my machine was scheduled to sleep soon (in another half hour or so), so I called it a night and went to sleep as well.

When I woke up a number of hours later, for some reason the machine hadn't, even though it was past its scheduled wake-up time. I had to hit the power button to reboot. Once running, Spotlight seemed to pick up its reindexing from wherever it left off.

I then decided I would boot from my “disk utility drive”—a very small external USB drive that’s almost empty, except for OS X, TechTool Pro, and DiskWarrior—and run TechTool Pro, to see if there were any obvious problems on my internal drive that may have contributed to the system's failure to wake up. There weren’t, so I rebooted to my internal drive. However, I noticed that while I was booted to the external drive, Spotlight was indexing that drive, and that once I rebooted to my internal drive, Spotlight no longer was reindexing my internal drive.

Is this consistent with the way Spotlight works? My internal drive is about 85% full, so I’d expect Spotlight to run its reindexing for many, many hours—more than it apparently did; and I have no idea what happens if it’s interrupted (say, by the sleep command, a system hangup, or a hard reboot), nor do I have a clue whether/when it reindexes automatically on its own.

[Simon]

Does it complete if you do
mdimport /
in a shell?

[Max]

Originally Posted by Simon 

Does it complete if you do
mdimport /
in a shell?

I'm not comfortable using Terminal. But I'm also not sure whether or not the indexing already was completed. How can I determine that? (That question was supposed to be implied when I said "I have no idea what happens if it’s interrupted (say, by the sleep command, a system hangup, or a hard reboot), nor do I have a clue whether/when it reindexes automatically on its own.")

[Big Mac]

It has stopped indexing when there's no longer a flashing dot inside the Spotlight spyglass menu icon.

[turtle777]

If I have issues with Spotlight, I always use Spotless.

-t

[Max]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

It has stopped indexing when there's no longer a flashing dot inside the Spotlight spyglass menu icon.

Yes, I know. I realize indexing stopped...but I have no idea if it was actually completed.

[Max]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

If I have issues with Spotlight, I always use Spotless.

-t

I'm aware of Spotless, though i've never used it. I still would like to understand how Spotlight performs its reindexing in the context of the problem I described.