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Finder search looks through external drives

I do a Finder search for a file. The search criteria is set to This Mac. When it searches it finds results on both my system drive and on a clone of the data volume that's on an external drive. Should the Finder be searching the external drive? I wouldn't expect it to. It does not search a connected Time Machine drive, which presumably has the same content.


Thanks very much for any insight.

Posted on Feb 26, 2022 8:38 AM

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Posted on Feb 26, 2022 8:41 AM

The Finder will search where there is a Spotlight index present. If that other drive is mounted, and because you stated it is a clone, it likely has an original Spotlight index on it which would satisfy the first sentence.

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4 replies

Feb 26, 2022 9:36 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Tom Wolsky wrote:

Thanks very much. I guess the best way to get around this is to unmount the drive.

That's not necessary, actually. You can click once on your internal hard drive (e.g. Macintosh HD) where it shows in the sidebar, then from that window select File => Find (which is a different way to get to Spotlight but with more options) and then near the top of the window your will see Search: and you can select that internal drive (e.g. Macintosh HD) which will restrict the search to just that drive, ignoring the external drives.

Finder search looks through external drives

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