HS not working on ANY external drives

@Member #1130

thanks so much for your help — all good questions, which I really appreciate. 

1) Using that Terminal command, all drives have indexing enabled. 

2) Searching the external drive using Finder search, I do indeed get some results, though not at all what I would call comprehensive — but then this is just about what I expect from Spotlight, which I have thought since it was introduced should be called Stoplight. 

and @Houdah Software I've combed oner the preferences in HS and System and made sure you were granted every possible permission, and nothing.  I sent a screenshot (which literally shows nothing) to your support with this thread for reference. 

I had already tried "contains" as well as about 40 other configurations. Nothing worked (and I tried it again just now, nothing).

Neither of the two Terminal commands returned any result, though I should add that the second one with "contains" just gave out the word "<quote>" rather than sending me back to my entry prompt. Further pressing the return key delivered <quote> over and over and over. 

Oh — I should add that I already indexed the drive in question last night.

Also, I found that HS does in fact work on *some* other hard drives, including one that is the same exact model as this one (Lacie 5TB Orange). But HS also does NOT work on another hard drive that is the same exact model as this one (Lacie 5TB Orange). And HS did work perfectly well with these two a couple weeks ago. 

I pasted the three Terminal commands, now indexing is re-enabled.

Unfortunately now HS is back to being able to search any drives at all.

why did you put the file path in quotation marks in the Terminal commands? I have never seen that before, and the way it responds with "<quote" seems weird. 

well, oddly enough, A Finder search for files — on the Orange Music  drive that was the one causing problems — has miraculously worked better than it ever does, presumably because I re-built the index yesterday. But equally oddly, HoudahSpot is still doing its "no files found" magic. 

I gotta tell you I am happy to try your Terminal test, but I am not comfortable using your recipes, because your last round contained a lot of quote marks which — whether they were put in as smart quotes or straight quotes — caused a lot of invalid file paths. I changed them to spaces, which seemed to help, but if your terminal fixes have quotes in them, I am not comfortable using them. 

I ran Disk Utility First Aid on all disks, they all seem to be fine. 

I am not using this on any other computer. The only computer that is direclty connected with all these drives is this one: 2021 iMac on 12.1.
  

Yes, Houdahspot and Terminal both have full disk permission. 

I have always put two spaces instead of space + quote, as you do.

none of this does anything to explain to me how  —- less than two weeks after I rebuilt the index on every drive I have — Houdahspot is completely failing to find ONE SINGLE FILE, when EVEN SPOTLIGHT, the lamest software known to man, can find thousands!

Stop telling me to do things that show that things are fine on this end and TELL ME SOMETHING TO FIX THIS.
 

@Member #1351

Remote diagnostics is tricky. Basically I have to make guesses and ask you to check things to confirm. I would rather make educated guess than have you chase wild guesses. That is why I ask for information. E.g. raw query and locations.

There are a number of things that could go wrong. There could be a HoudahSpot bug, a problem with the Spotlight index, a macOS bug, …. 

Let's walk through the reasoning. HoudahSpot builds a search query from your input. It hands that query and a list of locations to search to the Spotlight engine. This uses the Spotlight index to find matches. HoudahSpot can then apply additional filters to the results.

This is essentially the same as what the Finder does. A similar search should show similar results in HoudahSpot and in Finder. Typically the HoudahSpot search should show a few more results that the Finder filters out.

NOT TRUE. FINDER FREQUENTLY SHOWS 300 FILES WHERE HOUDAH FINDS THOUSANDS. 

Your search shows no results and says "No files found". Thus the problem is not with filters. Were there a filter, it would say "0 of x shown".

The search ends almost immediately. This could mean HoudahSpot is looking at a location that has no index NOT TRUE HERE, a location where HoudahSpot has no access right NOT TRUE HERE, or a search that cannot produces any result NOT TRUE HERE. Example: conflicting criteria or incorrect raw query.

That is why I ask you to post (and possibly test) the raw query. YOU DID NOT ADDRESS WHAT I SAID ABOUT YOUR MISUSE OF QUOTES, BUT JUST EXPLAINED WHY QUOTES ARE NECESSARY. WHEN YOU ADDRESS THE FACT THAT CUTTING AND PASTING YOUR TERMINAL COMMANDS RESULTED IN "ERROR INVALID PATH" COMMANDS — AND ADDRESS THE FACT THAT ALL THE INDEXING COMMANDS THAT I HAVE SEEN AND THAT I USE WITH NO PROBLEM HAVE NO QUOTES...... WHEN YOU ANSWER THAT IN A RESPONSIBLE WAY RATHER THAN JUST TALKING DOWN TO ME WITH ERRONEOUS INFORMATION, I WILL TRY YOUR RAW QUERY.   

I ask you to check Locations. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS. HOUDAH CAN FIND THESE FILES ON OTHER DRIVES. FINDER CAN FIND (SOME OF) THESE FILES ON THIS DRIVE, SO IT'S NOT AN INDEX PROBLEM. THE DRIVE WORKS PERFCECTLY WELL, SO IT'S NOT A DRIVE PROBLEM.

IT IS A HOUDAH PROBLEM. 
IT IS A HOUDAH PROBLEM. 
IT IS A HOUDAH PROBLEM. 
IT IS A HOUDAH PROBLEM. 

There is no good way to know if indexing of a drive has completed. You can make a pretty good guess by checking CPU activity in Activity Monitor and looking at drive activity (e.g. using the activity light on the drive).  THESE ARE NOT DEFINITE, UNIVERSAL OR RELIABLE, SO THERE'S NOTHING TO SAY HERE. EJECTING THE DRIVE WAS NOT STOPPED BY THE COMPUTER WHICH IT USUALLY DOES WHEN IT'S INDEXING. 

There are also macOS Monterey bugs where searches by "Kind" fail I AM NOT SEARCHING BY KIND (the latest HoudahSpot has a workaround for that), indexes go bad REALLY? AFTER TWO WEEKS?, and searches by exact match (e.g. "is" and "contains phrase") work unreliably. I AM NOT USING EXACT MATCH BECAUSE YOU ALREADY TOLD ME NOT TO, SO THAT IS ALSO IRRELEVANT. 

I GUESS HOUDAH SPOT JUST SUCKS, AND I SHOULD GET A REFUND AND FIND SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T. 

Houdah Software s. à r. l.
https://www.houdah.com

HoudahGeo: One-stop photo geocoding
HoudahSpot: Advanced file search utility
Tembo: Easy and effective file search

Well, we can forget about this for now — I re-indexed that drive again overnight... which didn't seem to do anything..... but then I restarted and reset the pram, and it seems to work perfectly well now.

I have to say that this was frustrating — I shouldn't have had to re-index this drive less than two weeks later.

And I have to reiterate my frustration with your Terminal commands. I re-index drives a fair amount and I have never seen directions that use quote marks, much less straight old quotes that are hard to fi0nd and trust. ( BTW, one reliable way to use the exact ones you are referring to is in Edit > Emoji & Symbols > Punctuation.)  I have seen and use extra spaces to achieve the effect you are talking about but not quotes, single, double, smart, straight — nothing.

So to be told that I don't understand what you are talking about, and not acknowledge that your commands — cut and pasted exactly — didn't work, when the commands I use to index DO work was really obnoxious.  It went hand in hand with a general refusal to take any kind of responsibility for the problem here. 

That said, I appreciate your continuing to try and solve this problem.

yes I used: 

sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*

I TRIED the mdutil command several times, and Houdah was still not able to find anything (even after I reinstalled the software!), which is why I tried a different method — which erased my entire 10 TB drive.

And for the record: I was using this software to find several hundred gigabytes of duplicate mp3s on my music library disk. Almost all duplicates end in " 1.mp3" instead of ".mp3" — a pretty basic thing to search for, and it did help me find them a couple times.

But just so you know, I now have to drag and drop a few dozen files at a time into a different app called "Renamer", and it changes the name of all songs ending in " 1.mp3" to files that end in " DUPE.mp3." 

And these files Houdah Spot can find with no problem.  So next time you want to tell me that there's something wrong with my indexes, maybe take a look in the mirror and figure out why your software can do one simple basic thing and yet cannot do an even simpler basic thing!

Also — you are really bad at describing Terminal commands in text, as most people are, so if you do that in the future, make sure you just type out the command line text verbatim. 

I still don't understand your thing about quotation marks — which, btw, many other people use to enclose Terminal commands, like so: "sudo tk -thule // volumes etc."  This makes them very confusing to see in other texts,  so unless they HAVE TO BE part of a command, I have to ask you PLEASE not to use in Terminal instructions.  

David Colman

I guess that you have abandoned any further comment on this thread. I gotta reiterate my frustration that A) Renamer, an app that doesn't even sell itself as a search tool, is much better at finding files than Houdah, and B) I have found a yet a new shortfall and disappointment — I finally figured how to add criteria to the Houdah search aside from name, kind and modified......only to find that these are only applicable to the search itself — there's no way, aside from name kind and modified, to SORT ALL THE RESULTS!!!! Dude — even the superlame Spotlight let's you sort your results via over a dozen filters.

I have to say, yet again, what a phenomenal disappointment this has been, especially given the boasts and claims Houdah makes about itself.  

are you serious? I have to assume you are a completely different person who didn't even bother to read the thread since THE WHOLE PROBLEM I WAS HAVING WITH YOUR $%^&*  SOFTWARE WAS THAT IT COULD NOT FIND ONE SINGLE FILE WITH THE SEARCH TERM " 1.MP3"  

This is a problem that has been going back weeks. WEEKS.

SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY READING BACK AND ANSWERING THAT AGAIN FFS. 

Or, if you just wanted to seem like a total asshole, you did a fantastic job.