Spotlight indexing appears stuck, what can I do?

Question

My Spotlight index got corrupted, preventing me from searching messages in Mail.app. I added my HD to Spotlight's privacy list to delete the index. I then removed it from the privacy list so Spotlight would reindex the drive from scratch.

I have done this before with no real problem.

However, this time Spotlight appears to be stuck. It's been "Estimating indexing time" for about 6 hours now.

What can/should I do?

Answer 1

You can try to temporarily disable Spotlight, removing its files and then reenabling it.

The process to do this involves executing Terminal commands, so please pay attention and triple check each step.

Open a Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and type:

cd /Volumes
ls -l

Examine the output of that, one should be your “broken” Volume. Once you have it identified, proceed with these steps, all in the Terminal. The first time you execute a command, your password may be required, this is normal.

The output may look like:

lrwxr-xr-x   1 root    admin     1 Sep  2 12:23 MacintoshHD -> /

So the name you’re after is “MacintoshHD”.

Step Number One: Disable Spotlight for your Drive.

sudo mdutil -i off "/Volumes/the_name_you_have_identified_before"

Step Number Two: Remove the indexes from the Drive.

sudo mdutil -E "/Volumes/the_name_you_have_identified_before"

Step Number Three: Eliminate all Spotlight Files from the Drive. (two commands)

cd "/Volumes/the_name_you_have_identified_before"
sudo rm -fr .Spotlight-V100

Be careful with the last command, make sure you type it exactly as it appears.

Step Number Four: Re-enable spotlight in the Drive.

sudo mdutil -i on "/Volumes/the_name_you_have_identified_before"

Now this should trigger a Spotlight complete re-indexing. You have to be extremely patient with it. Spotlight sometimes appears to be frozen but it’s really indexing. It’s best to leave it overnight and be patient.