Alfred shows only the backup on my external drive, no other folders

[Andi]

Hi there, 

 

I have an external drive where i store all of my photos/library + the backup of my macbook. Of course, i want to use Alfred to quickly find me the folders and files in my photo library. I put my whole ext. drive into the search scope, but whenever i search for a folder on there, Alfred shows nothing. What it does show though are the files of my Macbook backup. I put every possible directory in the search scope, but nothing...

 

Any ideas? Thanks for your help

 

Andi 

[deanishe]

Hi @Andi, welcome to the forum.

 

Could you post a screenshot of your /Volumes directory and Alfred Search Scope?

[Andi]

Hi deanishe, 

 

thanks

 

Here are the screenshots..

 

 

[deanishe]

Are you on Catalina? It seems to have problems indexing data on the same partition as Time Machine backups.

[Andi]

Yes Catalina. Is this a known problem?

[Vero]

@Andi If you open Alfred's preferences to the Help tab > Troubleshooting > Run Troubleshooting and drag in files from your external drive, you'll see an analysis of whether the files are indexed, etc... 

 

Paste your results in your response and we can also take a look.

 

Cheers,
Vero

[deanishe]

12 minutes ago, Andi said:

Yes Catalina. Is this a known problem?

 

I googled and found several other people having the same issue.

[Andi]

There it is..

 

[AriW]

Any updates on this topic? I have a huge external drive, so using it for Time Machine but also for extra storage to preserve space on my internal SSD.

1. Can MacOS be forced to index content here? Specifically applications
2. Can Alfred be made to look here? Adding folder paths in Preferences did not help

Thanks,

Ari W.

[deanishe]

2 hours ago, AriW said:

Can Alfred be made to look here? Adding folder paths in Preferences did not help

 

Alfred uses the same system index as Spotlight, so if you can't get macOS to index it, Alfred won't be able to find it, either.

 

AFAIK, the issue was never fixed on Catalina. But I haven't got a clue about Big Sur.

 

Giving your Time Machine backup its own partition does fix the issue. I think using a disk image does, too.

[AriW]

Partitioning is a great idea, I will be doing that. Thank you!