Search all external volumes.

[kstoff]

Hello,

I've searched around and am surprised that I've been unable to find anything.

 

I added "/Volumes" to my search scope, but that doesn't seem to allow it to search the external drives. If I add a specific drive, say "/Volumes/ExternalHardDrive" then it will search successfully. However, we have hundreds of hard drives and I may cycle through 5 or 10 drives in a day. I do not want to have to manually add every drive.

 

Am I missing something obvious?

 

Thanks!

[deanishe]

Hi @kstoff, welcome to the forum.

 

4 hours ago, kstoff said:

Am I missing something obvious?

 

Nope, I don't think so.

 

I believe this is due to the way the system metadata index (which both Spotlight and Alfred use) resolves the search scope. AFAIK, Alfred's search scope works in the same way as the -onlyin option to mdfind (the CLI version of Spotlight) or Finder's search (in this case).

The upshot is that search paths don't cross partition boundaries, so although a global search will find stuff anywhere, once you specify a search path (even /), you will only get results that are on the same partition.

That is to say, you currently have to specifically add each partition to Alfred's search scope, just as you would have to add an -onlyin /Volumes/blah for each partition to an mdfind command.

You can see the same behaviour in Finder if you explicitly "Go To Folder…" /Volumes (which is hidden by default) and try to search for something.

I believe the only solution would be for Alfred to special-case the search scope item /Volumes and explicitly add every mounted partition to the search scope on each search.

Edited February 20, 2019 by deanishe