[DM-MUG] Indexing of the Hard Drive

[Matthew W.]

I'm assuming you're asking about the Spotlight index. It does not  
exist on a Panther install and has nothing to do with system  
performance directly. Spotlight comes on 10.4 and indexes a drive to  
allow searching of the contents and metadata of files of many types.  
I've heard Leopard will enhance this even further and integrate with  
the new backup feature, called Time Machine. In short, if you need to  
search the 'insides of your files' you'll need to upgrade to Tiger.

Indexing on a Tiger install, 10.4.0 or above, happens automatically  
the first time you attach a new drive or boot up the system. It works  
in the background and *mostly* does not impede any operations. In  
reality, it will slow some Finder and disk-related functioning  
noticeably on certain systems the first time it is run. However, left  
to its own devices on a well-maintained system it should finish  
within a couple of hours. Each time a change is made to the system  
after that, it takes very little time to update the database.

Spotless is a good app for managing the Tiger Spotlight status. It is  
from the fine folks who did Printer Setup Repair. <http:// 
www.fixamacsoftware.com/software/index.html>

Matthew

On Oct 7, 2006, at 5:09 PM, James Corbett wrote:

> Good Evening,
>
> 	I was wondering about indexing of the hard drive. I have not yet  
> done this on my Mac and I was wondering if I should do that and if  
> so what does it do? About how long will it take and will this help  
> in speeding up the Mac?
> 	I have a G-4 iMac, 1.25 GHZ PowerPC Processor with 1.5GB of memory  
> and the hard drive is 80 GBs. I am still learning about this OS and  
> hardware platform and I am running Panther 10.3.9. Thank you for  
> taking the time to answer my questions.
>
> A switcher,
>
> James Corbett



Matthew Wheeler
-- iVP --
Des Moines Macintosh Users Group
http://www.dmmug.org