How to Disable Drive Indexing on Windows for External USB and Internal Hard Drives

Turning Off Drive Indexing on Windows for External USB Drives

If you’ve noticed your external USB drives feeling unusually sluggish, with annoying delays when searching or copying files, you’re not alone. Sometimes, Windows’ default drive indexing can be more trouble than it’s worth—particularly on external drives where you just want to transfer files without extra background processes. Drive indexing is designed to speed up searches by creating a map of your files, but on external drives, it can actually slow things down, increase disk activity, and make transfers feel slower. Fortunately, turning it off is fairly straightforward once you know where to look.

What’s the Benefit of Disabling Drive Indexing?

Drive indexing can be a bit of a double-edged sword. It helps you find files faster—great for searching through a few documents. But on external drives, it can cause more harm than good. Think of Windows constantly updating a directory map in the background—that’s fine inside your PC, but on a USB drive, it adds extra overhead, sometimes even dragging down transfer speeds. For me, disabling indexing sped up copying large batches of files and made the system more responsive, especially when ejecting drives. You’ll usually find the setting in Indexing Options or sometimes under your drive’s Properties in File Explorer, depending on your Windows version.

How to Turn Off Drive Indexing on Your USB Drives

Disabling indexing on your external drive is pretty straightforward, but I’ll admit it took a bit of trial and error to get it right. The main approach is to access the drive’s properties through File Explorer. If that doesn’t work, there are other methods like system settings or command line options, but for most users, the graphical interface will do the trick.

Step-by-step Guide Based on My Experience:

1. Open File Explorer
   Press Windows key + E to open it. This simple step can sometimes be tricky, especially if you’ve got several drives plugged in. Look for your external USB drive under ‘This PC’ or ‘Devices and Drives’.

2. Right-click the External Drive
   Find your drive, right-click, and select Properties. This opens the drive’s settings window.

3. Navigate to the General Tab
   In the properties window, make sure you’re on the General tab. That’s where you’ll find the checkbox related to indexing. Sometimes it’s not obvious, especially if options are hidden or grouped; look for the one that says allowing files on this drive to be indexed.

4. Uncheck the Content Indexing Option
   Look for the box labeled Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties. It’s often near the bottom of the window. Uncheck it, then click Apply.
   – When prompted, choose Apply changes to this folder, subfolders, and files. This makes sure indexing is turned off across the entire drive, not just the top-level folder. It took me a bit of clicking around to find that option as Windows sometimes hides it behind expandable sections, but you’ll get there.

5. Confirm and Wait for Changes to Take Effect
   Click OK. Usually, a dialog appears asking if you want to apply the settings just to this folder or include subfolders and files. I recommend choosing the latter. Depending on your drive size, it might take a moment for the changes to apply.

6. Restart Your PC
   After applying the settings, I suggest rebooting your computer. Windows sometimes needs a restart to properly stop background indexing processes. Once back on, check if your drive is still being indexed by opening tpm.msc or navigating through Settings > Search > Indexing Options. You should see that the drive is no longer being indexed, and copying files should feel a lot quicker.

What Changes When You Disable Indexing?

Most users notice a boost in transfer speeds—especially with USB external drives. Files copy faster, and the overall system feels more responsive during large transfers or searches. This is because Windows isn’t actively updating the index in the background, which frees up system resources. Also, you’ll avoid those annoying search lag spikes when using Windows Search with that drive connected.

If you rely on quick searches within your external drive, disabling indexing might slow things down a little. But for me, the trade-off was worth it—less background activity, less frustration.

If you’re comfortable using Command Line or PowerShell, there are commands like fsutil or registry tweaks to turn off indexing, but generally, the graphical method is sufficient for most users.

I hope this helps—finding the right way to disable indexing on my external drives took some trial and error. Just remember:

• Drive Properties > General Tab > Uncheck “Allow content indexing”
• Apply to all subfolders and files
• Reboot your PC

Good luck, and hopefully this saves someone else from a weekend of head-scratching. It’s a simple tweak, but it made a noticeable difference in my setup.