Is it possible to do a Search for a filename or folder name on a thumb drive?

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Level 1

19 points

Is it possible to do a Search for a filename or folder name on a thumb drive?

Is it possible to do a Search for a filename or folder name on a USB thumb drive attached to my MacBook Pro? They work fine otherwise, I can copy files, and do all the normal organizing. I've tried everything. I've never been able to do an ordinary search on a thumb drive with this computer. I can start in the folder for the thumb drive, but as soon as I type into the search box, the selection in "Locations" jumps from the thumb drive to my MBP.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 23, 2024 4:41 PM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

152,380 points

Nov 24, 2024 9:31 AM in response to Kirkwood

Ok, then go to System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy tab. Does this drive appear there? If so, remove it.

If it is not there, the I suggest that you reindex Spotlight. To do so:

Open Terminal.
Type the following command, and then, press Enter:

sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/YourUSBDriveName

Replace YourUSBDriveName with the name of your USB thumb drive.

Once the drive have been indexed, you can check the indexing status with:

sudo mdutil -s /Volumes/YourUSBDriveName

Finally, try searching this drive with Spotlight again.

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

152,380 points

Nov 23, 2024 6:02 PM in response to Kirkwood

Yes, it should be possible ...

... and there a number of potential ways to do so.

Let's start with using macOS's Spotlight. What we want to do is check its indexing to be sure that this external drive is not excluded. How to do that will depend on the version of macOS running on your Mac. Your tagline shows macOS 10.15. That would be Catalina. Is that still correct?

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Answer 3

Kirkwood Author

Level 1

19 points

Nov 24, 2024 6:40 PM in response to Tesserax

Ok, I tried that. It didn't work.

I got error messages like this for a thumb drive named '256G THUMB'

Error: invalid path `/Volumes/256G'.

Error: invalid path `THUMB'.

I tried using an underscore in the name instead of the space, but still got the same error.

Also tried it for an older thumb drive named 'Attache 1G'

Error: invalid path `/Volumes/Attache'.

Error: invalid path `1G'.

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Answer 4

Tesserax

Level 10

152,380 points

Nov 24, 2024 7:11 PM in response to Kirkwood

Sorry, but I'm out of ideas for you to try ... expect suggesting that you contact Apple Support directly for further assistance with this matter. You can do so, simply by selecting the "Support" link on the lower left-hand side of this forum's web page. Good luck!

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