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Fixing Spotty Spotlight Behavior - Lion E-mail
The Spotlight privacy list is a computer-level setting that remains the same across all user accounts, but it's not protected by administrative access, which means any user can change the privacy list. In this case, the Spotlight privacy list isn't any less secure than the rest of the file system, as any user can still have full access to locally connected non-system volumes because the system defaults to ignoring ownership on those volumes.

From the Spotlight preferences, any user can choose to disable specific categories from appearing in Spotlight searches. A user can also prevent volumes from being indexed by specifying those volumes in the privacy list. However, by default all new volumes are automatically indexed, so a user must manually configure Spotlight to ignore a volume.

All Spotlight settings are applied immediately. If you add an entire volume to the privacy list, then the system will delete the Spotlight index database from that volume. In turn, removing a volume from the privacy list will rebuild the Spotlight index database on that volume. This technique, to rebuild the Spotlight index databases by adding and then removing a volume from the privacy list, is the most common method to resolve problematic Spotlight performance. Excerpted from Apple Pro Training Series: OS X Lion Support Essentials: Supporting and Troubleshooting OS X Lion by Kevin M. White
 
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