Amazing, strange, and mystifying - SOLVED

[Jim Ault]

On 1/23/06 12:47 PM, "Timothy Miller" <gandalf at doctortimothyMiller.com>
wrote:
> Coincidentally, just this morning I found a wayward file I thought I
> had lost, or maybe never made in the first place. If I had not found
> it, I would have suffered some serious harm. When I finally found it,
> it seemed to be MIA because of... Spotlight! It was right where it
> belonged, all along, and in no mysterious place, either. It was in my
> documents folder, at the top level of the folder. Permissions were
> set correctly and repaired, and I even ran diskwarrior. Upgrading to
> 10.4.4. didn't help, either. The file in question was not the only
> file in my documents folder that Spotlight was overlooking.
> 
> I logged onto an apple support forum, dedicated to discussion of
> Spotlight. Many dissatisfied and perplexed users are complaining
> there about Spotlight-blindness. It's often speculated that
> Spotlight's database can get corrupted. Ironically, DiskWarrior might
> corrupt it.
> 
> There's a shareware utility called Spotless that rebuilds Spotlight's
> database, I think, also, optionally, turns off find-by-content, which
> can fill up small or crowded hard disks and slow down slow machines.
> 
> Even better, there's a freeware app called EasyFind. It works pretty
> much the way command-F worked Macintosh OS before Spotlight came
> along -- but better. It's generally praised on the aforementioned
> peer support site. I tried it this morning. It looks good to me.
> 

Since I have switched to Path Finder, I have been very happy with is
interface and features (virtually all of the normal Finder plus many more).
Just last night I began to do a few comparison searches:

result:  All files found by Path Finder... many cases of hundreds of missing
files in Spotlight, esp if the search term is "chan" and is not the
beginning of the file or folder name (redChannel, leftChannel)

This is unacceptable, so Spotlight is relegated to building a fast list of
"jpg" or "psd" and not regarded as a rigorous, exhaustive list.

By the way, setting a folder to "private" in Spotlight preferences will hide
from both the "content" indexing AND the file/folder searching.

Thanks for your input

Jim Ault
Las Vegas
Contrary to Spotlight, I am not fast, but I *am* reliable.