Finding specific things

Searching an external drive

Updated 2026-07-31 · 4 min read

A connected drive should be searchable. Often it is not, and the format is usually why.

First, check the format

Finder → select the drive → ⌘I (Get Info). The Format line matters:

Format	Spotlight
APFS	Indexes properly
Mac OS Extended (HFS+)	Indexes properly
exFAT	Unreliable — no metadata support
FAT32	Unreliable, same reason
NTFS (read-only)	Cannot index; needs to write its index to the volume

exFAT is the usual culprit, because it is what drives ship formatted as so they work on both Mac and Windows.

Turn indexing on

sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/DriveName
sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/DriveName

Then wait — a large drive takes a while.

Search without an index

find reads the directory tree directly and does not care about formats or indexes:

find /Volumes/DriveName -iname "*invoice*"

Slower, complete, works on exFAT and read-only NTFS alike.

Searching from the Finder

Open the drive in a window and press ⌘F, then click the drive's name in the scope bar rather than "This Mac". On an unindexed volume Finder falls back to a live search, which works but is slow and gives no progress.

The wider problem

Even a properly indexed external drive disappears from search the moment you eject it, because Spotlight's index for a volume lives on that volume. If you rotate between archive disks, that is the real limitation, and the reason Everywhere keeps unmounted volumes in its index and shows their files dimmed rather than dropping them.

Common questions

Should I reformat my external drive to APFS?

Only if you never need to write to it from Windows. APFS indexes and performs better on a Mac; exFAT is the compromise for cross-platform use.

Why is searching my external drive so slow?

Almost certainly it is unindexed, so Finder is reading every folder live rather than consulting an index.