I found out that Finder / Spotlight doesn't find files or folders which are in a specific external drive. How can that be and - more important - how can I include this drive when a search is requested? In general: How can I include all drives, the backup drive included?
Thanks in advance
Hans
Earlier Mac models
Iif that drive were Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) it would be expected that your Mac could not quickly find things on it, because the Mac files would be inside a Sparse Bundle Disk Image file.
But that drive SHOULD have been indexed when the rest of your Mac was indexed. If it was not connected when the rest of your Mac was imaged, perhaps it got overlooked.
you can create a new spotlight index of all connected drives by using this procedure. Within a hour or so of awake but not-too-busy time, it should be ready to go.
Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support
Iif that drive were Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) it would be expected that your Mac could not quickly find things on it, because the Mac files would be inside a Sparse Bundle Disk Image file.
But that drive SHOULD have been indexed when the rest of your Mac was indexed. If it was not connected when the rest of your Mac was imaged, perhaps it got overlooked.
you can create a new spotlight index of all connected drives by using this procedure. Within a hour or so of awake but not-too-busy time, it should be ready to go.
Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support
getInfo on the Drive Icon.
what format is the external drive?
this one is macOS extended.
This one is Mac OS Extended also. Should that be something else? The other drives are also formatted as Mac OS Extended. I only have 1 other drive which is APFS formatted. All files in these drives can be found with Finder except for this one below:
I can't connect it to another Mac as I posess only one Mac. and it is not protected with a password. Disk utility find the disk appearing to be ok. The suggestion of our friend Bennet-Alder above that the drive might have been overlooked when the Mac was indexed sounds very plausible to me. This drive is an external and I disconnected it because of an photo shoot I had some days (maybe a week or so) ago, so it wasn't available for the Mac. I have no problems with the other drives because they stayed in place during the indexing proces. I just started to rebuild the index of this drive. And wait patiently.
Thanks for now. I'll be back with the results of the rebuild.
Hans
Check the disk using Disk Utility and reset the permissions to default (you have 'custom' on your screen).
In the terminal, the command would be
sudo diskutil resetUserPermissions /dev/disk2s2 `id -u`
where diskXsY is your volume `PhoenixM`
(you can find it in Disk Utility or in the terminal using the `diskutil list` command).
This rebuild did the job! Thanks a lot for your advice. I don't know how long it took for my Mac to finish the job because I left it running all night, but the next day Finder could locate all the files and folders on this drive.
Thanks again for your time and help.
Hans
Nope: nothing is in Spotlight's Privacy :
Have you any time dragged that external drive to Spotlight's Privacy (in Sys Prefs)?
Does it show up in another Mac? Does it have some sort of password protection? What does Disk Utility say about it when you click the First Aid button?
Finder doesn't find files/folders on an external drive
