Is there any way to prevent Spotlight from searching an externally
attached (USB) Windows (FAT32) drive in Mac OS X 10.4?

The Spotlight Privacy tab in Spotlight system preferences cannot be
used for FAT32 drives, because FAT32 drives can't store the proper
metadata.

Spotlight is slowed to a crawl for me, because I have a huge drive
with tens of thousands of files attached, so every time I try to do a
search, it has to search that drive - a drive which can't be indexed
(because it's FAT32) and which apparently can't NOT be searched
(because it's FAT32).

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Request for Question Clarification by maniac-ga on 13 Oct 2005 18:04 PDT

Hello Placain,

I don't quite have the same hardware set up you do but believe I have a solution.

From the apple menu
  System Preferences... -> Spotlight (upper right on my system, use
"show all" if needed)

Select the Privacy tab.

Drag & drop the USB volume to the list (or use the add button).

Doing this should exclude your USB volume from the search.

Please give this a try and either way - make a clarification
indicating the results.

  --Maniac

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Clarification of Question by placain-ga on 13 Oct 2005 19:24 PDT

As I specifically stated in the question, this does not work for FAT32 drives.