Disabling Drive Indexing on Windows for External USB Drives
So, here’s where I got stuck—your external USB drives start feeling sluggish, and you notice weird delays when searching or copying files. Turns out, Windows’ default drive indexing can sometimes be more hassle than help, especially on those external drives that you just want to copy files to and from without all the background fuss. Drive indexing is meant to speed up searches by creating an index of your files, but if you’re like me on an external drive, it can slow things down, cause extra disk activity, and make your transfers feel sluggish. Luckily, turning it off isn’t too hard once you know where to look.
Why Bother Turning Off Drive Indexing?
Drive indexing is a bit of a double-edged sword. Yeah, it helps you find files faster—like, if you’re searching for that one document you worked on yesterday. But on external drives, it can actually be a drag. It’s like Windows keeps updating this map of what’s on your drive in the background, and that’s fine inside your PC, but for a USB drive, it adds overhead—sometimes even messing with transfer speeds. For me, disabling it made copying large batches of files faster and the overall system felt more responsive, especially when I was copying or ejecting drives. The setting is usually tucked inside Indexing Options or sometimes under the drive’s properties in File Explorer, depending on your Windows build.
How to Turn Off Drive Indexing for USB Drives
Here’s the deal — disabling indexing on your external drive is pretty straightforward, but I’ll admit, it took me a bit of trial and error to get it right. The main trick is to go into the drive’s properties via File Explorer. If that doesn’t seem to work, there’s also a way through system settings if you prefer, or even with command line commands. But honestly, the GUI route is enough for most folks.
Step-by-step How I Did It:
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Open File Explorer
Pressing Windows key + E will open it. This should be simple, but I kept trying to right-click on the wrong drive or get lost in a sea of drives, especially if you have a bunch of external ones plugged in. You want to find your external USB drive under “This PC” or “Devices and Drives”. -
Right-click the External Drive
Find the drive, right-click it, and then select Properties. That will open the drive’s properties window. -
Go to the General Tab
In the properties, make sure you’re on the General tab. That’s where the checkbox for indexing is usually located. Sometimes it’s not immediately obvious, especially if you have a lot of options or labels hidden, but look for the one that mentions allowing files on this drive to have contents indexed. -
Uncheck the Indexing Option
Find the box that says Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties. It’s often below the main area and easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. Uncheck it. After that, click Apply.
– When prompted, make sure you select Apply changes to this folder, subfolders, and files. That way, the setting disables indexing comprehensively across the drive, not just at the top level. This part took me some clicking around because Windows can hide that option behind collapsible sections or dialogues, but eventually, I got it. -
Confirm and Wait
Click OK. Usually, a dialog pops up asking if you want to apply changes just for the folder or for subfolders and files, and I recommend choosing the latter—more thorough and less hassle later. Wait for Windows to do its thing. For big drives, this might take a moment. -
Restart Windows
Once you’ve applied the change, I’d recommend a full reboot. Windows sometimes needs a restart to make sure all background indexing processes are stopped. After rebooting, check if your drive is still indexing by opening thetpm.mscor going into Settings > Search > Indexing Options (if it’s visible). You should see that the drive is no longer being indexed, and copying files feels faster—at least from my experience.
What Changes After Disabling Indexing?
Most people notice that their file transfer speeds pick up a bit, especially on external USB drives. Files seem to copy faster, and the system overall feels snappier when you’re dealing with large transfers or search operations. This is because your drive isn’t constantly updating the index in the background anymore, which frees up some resources. Also, you won’t see those annoying little search lag spikes when using Windows Search with that drive connected.
If you’re relying on quick searches inside your external drive, turning this off might slow things down a tad — but, honestly, for me, it was worth the trade-off. Less background activity, less frustration.
If you’re into CLI, the process can also be done with commands like fsutil or PowerShell scripts that modify registry entries, but honestly, that’s more advanced and not usually necessary unless you’re managing lots of drives or doing automated setups.
Anyway, hope this helps — it took me way too long to figure out the right way to disable that damn indexing for my external drives. Double-check these things:
- Drive properties > General tab > Uncheck “Allow content indexing”
- Apply to all subfolders and files
- Reboot
Good luck, and hopefully this saves someone else a weekend of frustration. It’s a simple tweak, but it really made a noticeable difference on my setup.