Prevent Spotlight from indexing external drive
You could have a script that runs at startup that employs the technique suggested in this post https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/91759/183505
When booting from DriveA (when you want to disable spotlight indexing for External DriveB) you could execute :
touch /Volumes/DriveB/.metadata_never_index
When booting from external DriveB and you want to re-enable spotlight perhaps you could have your startup script execute:
rm /Volumes/DriveB/.metadata_never_index
The linked post also lists other ways to programatically alter the spotlight exclusions.
Here are some ways to add a script that will launch at login : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6442364/running-script-upon-login-mac
Good luck!
Edit : Method using bash scripts and plist files
First create a startup script. I chose to create one at ~/script.sh
Make sure it's executable chmod +x ~/script.sh
Script for OS that wants to hide a drive from spotlight
#!/bin/bash
flagLocation="/Volumes/DriveToHide"
flagRemoved=".ney_the_index" # a new name
# if flag exists rename it.
if [ -a "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index" ]; then
mv "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index" "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved";
fi
Script on the OS that wants to index the drive
#!/bin/bash
flagLocation="/Volumes/DriveToHide"
flagRemoved=".ney_the_index"
if [ -a "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved" ]; then
mv "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved" "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index"
fi
if [ ! -a "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved" ] || [ ! -a "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index" ] ; then
touch "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index"
fi
Create a plist file ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.loginscript.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.user.loginscript</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Users/yourusername/script.sh</string>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
Test it by loading and unloading it:
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.loginscript.plist
I learned today that you can use a sudo touch /.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs
in the root directory of each drive to separate Indexes from OS X Boot-Drives. It is a special version of .metadata-never-index
, because it will (re)index the drive when you boot from it, but not when you don't.