Finder Search not working plus Column view sooooo slow.

If this doesn't work please let me know with further details. Thanks!

On the Mac in Sys Prefs>Spotlight>Search results, what all is checked?

Find Any File...

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/index.php

Hold Option or alt key when selecting Find to Find All.

How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac

If searching your Mac doesn’t return expected results, rebuilding the Spotlight index might help.

1. Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
2. Click the Privacy tab.
3. Drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching. Or click the Add (+) button and select the folder or disk to add.
4. To add an item to the Privacy tab, you must have ownership permissions for that item. To learn about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for “permissions.”
5. From the same list of locations, select the folder or disk that you just added. Then click the Remove (–) button to remove it from the list.
6. Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the folder or disk.

If still not working...

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

Manually Rebuilding Spotlight via Terminal

If the aforementioned Spotlight control panel approach doesn’t spur a reindexation of the drive, you may need to initiate it manually through the command line. Open Terminal and use the following command string to do so:

sudo mdutil -E /

This basically asks for temporary super user status, which is why Terminal may ask you for your password (it may not if you’ve used a sudo command recently or are already logged in as a super user or root. The command asks the unix tool mdutil to reindex the spotlight database for everything on the computer, including external drives, mounted disk images, etc. To re-index only for a specific drive, use the /Volumes path. For example, for an external drive named “MiniMe,” the command would look like this:

sudo mdutil -i on /

Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line.

If still need be…

Open Terminal and run each of these one at a time

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network

killall Dock

sudo mdutil -E /

sudo mdutil -i on /

Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line.

Hm... This is certainly getting pickier, a fresh OS should fix this but let's leave that as a last resort. I've been researching in the meantime and maybe this can help. If not, please reply with an update on what's happening.

1. In Finder, click on Applications, then Utilities, and double-click Terminal.
2. 
3. In the Terminal window, type the following command to list all connected drives and their identifiers: diskutil list
4. 
5. Locate your Samsung T7 external drive in the list and note its identifier (e.g., disk2).
6. To format the drive, type the following command, replacing "X" with the identifier noted in the previous step: sudo diskutil eraseDisk APFS "SamsungT7" GPT /dev/diskX.

• • This command will format the Samsung T7 drive as APFS with the name SamsungT7 and use the GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme.
  • If you prefer to use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) instead of APFS, replace APFS with JHFS+ in the command.

1. Press Enter to execute the command. You will be prompted to enter your administrator password.
2. Enter your password and press Enter again. The Terminal will format your Samsung T7 drive according to your chosen settings.
3. Once the formatting is complete, a success message will appear in Terminal

A few things to keep in mind and that may or may not be related to your problems:

1- When using any current macOS from 10.15 Catalina to the latest 15 Sequoia, SSDs should be formatted APFS. HDDs may also be formatted with APFS, but drive performance may be impacted. APFS really was designed to maximize the performance of SSDs.

2- Time Machine backups really should be the only thing kept on a backup drive. Storing miscellaneous user files on a backup drive risks those files and the computer backup when the drive fails. A Time Machine backup drive should be 2x to 3x the capacity of the drive(s) you will be backing up.

3- It is best practice to always have available as free space no less than about 15% of the startup drive's total capacity. This will allow the maOS the room it needs to operate properly without slowing it down. In other words, don't let the startup drive run short of available storage space; never less than 50GB, or so.

Hey buddy Kryten!

So from what I've read, has the T7 stopped being searchable on your Mac? Was this sudden, did it work before, have you tried restarting the Mac? As always any information you can include would be greatly appreciated!

and don't worry we'll get this fixed

What year and model is your Mac? Also, have you tried using another External Drive? Except for some formatting with Disk Utility, External Drives should be plug-in and go. I would suggest to check the cables on the T7. I have seen other discussions and the T7 has similar or worse problems on Macs and Macbooks.

Lastly, I know it's not convenient, but I would suggest transferring the information from the T7 to another External Drive something like a Sandisk Pro G-Drive or Crucial X9 Pro. If you have anymore updates please let me know!

What format are you using? APFS, HFS+, exFAT or FAT32?