Spotlight will not index external drive

Mercury Elite Quad Pro external USB - C 3.1 drive enclosure with 4 SATA Hard Drives in it. M4 Mac mini with 512GB storage. Running Mac OS Sequoia 15.3.2. External hard drives are now unsearchable after update. Tried all the usual techniques - adding then deleting from Spotlight Search Privacy. No joy.


Yes - my drives are named after the Founding Fathers. Rush refers to Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration and friend of Adams and Franklin.


Tried Terminal commands:


  • sudo mdutil -Eai off
  • sudo mdutil -Eai on 
  • mdutil -as


Returned the following:


@-Mac-mini ~ % sudo mdutil -Eai on


/:


Indexing enabled. 


/System/Volumes/Data:


Indexing enabled. 


/System/Volumes/Preboot:


Indexing enabled. 


/Volumes/Adams:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Adams - Data:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Hancock:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Hancock - Data:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Jefferson:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Jefferson - Data:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Madison:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Madison - Data:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Rush:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Rush - Data:


Indexing and searching disabled.


/Volumes/Washington:


Indexing enabled. 


/Volumes/Washington - Data:


Indexing enabled. 


The mdutil -as command seemed to do nothing.



Any suggestions on how to fix this?



Mac mini

Posted on Mar 23, 2025 4:44 PM

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Spotlight will not index external drive

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