Why did spotlight in Catalina just start showing "Loading" for external drives?

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Level 1

9 points

Why did spotlight in Catalina just start showing "Loading" for external drives?

New 2018 Mac Mini came pre-installed with Catalina (10.15.7). Already had issues with external SSD drives but could mostly put up with it. However, today it began showing "Loading..." when performing a spotlight search across multiple internal/external drives. I've only ever seen "Loading..." when I was searching a network computer.

Also having mucho problems with Logic Pro X randomly crashing—particularly opening projects (stored on external drives). No idea if these are related.

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 25, 2021 11:38 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

toastosxDC

Level 2

315 points

Aug 25, 2021 7:52 PM in response to noisyblocks

Try rebuilding spotlight index.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716

You may also try rebooting into safe mode by restarting and holding down SHIFT while your Mac restarts. See if the problem persists, then restart.

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

210,615 points

Aug 26, 2021 3:43 PM in response to noisyblocks

If you're going to continue to use those external hard drive with you Mac you should copy the files to a correctly formatted volume, erase and reformat the EHDs to either of these formats depending on the type of drive it is:

the copy the files back to the drive. You don't want to continually run on ExFAT.

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Answer 3

noisyblocks Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 26, 2021 8:20 AM in response to toastosxDC

Thanks. Spotlight mysteriously started working again...which isn't great because I still have no idea what caused it to fail.

I saw another recommendation for booting into safe mode, however, none of the external SSDs are available to view in safe mode so there's nothing left to test. All the external SSDs are in ExFAT format (inherited from an older system running High Sierra; too late to reformat), so I've had all kinds of permissions issues on Catalina that seem to affect all types of functions. Really restrictive.

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Answer 4

Old Toad

Level 10

210,615 points

Aug 27, 2021 9:16 AM in response to noisyblocks

Yes, but it only has to be done once. If you get a new EHD to facilitate the copying erase and format the new drive (A) to the correct format and copy the files from B to A. Then reformat B and copy the files from C to B, etc. When you're done you'll have one free drive to be used as you see fit, maybe a clone of the boot drive.

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Answer 5

noisyblocks Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 26, 2021 4:44 PM in response to Old Toad

Thanks Toad. I've been considering it...it's a lot of data to move around.

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Why did spotlight in Catalina just start showing "Loading" for external drives?

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