You are doing regular backups, right?

Maybe you are like me, backing up OS X to a external usb hard drive using the amazing SuperDuper! from Shirt Pocket. Maybe you've just started using a new usb hard drive because you realized that your previous one seemed to be running slow, or even better you've given your previous backup to a friend to keep off site!

Maybe, like me, you noticed that you new backup drive was going incredibly slow. Maybe after looking up some information about usb 2.0 transfer rates and potential problems with the new drive, you started wondering if something more fishy was going on.

You might even have recently started using Spotlight (instead of your longtime favorite Quicksilver) to launch applications. Maybe the last time you used Spotlight you noticed that it was trying to index the new drive while it was being copied to. Maybe you suspect that Spotlight is the culprit for the slowness. You are probably right.

I'm not sure why Spotlight wasn't immediately disabled by SuperDuper! when I started using it, but disabling it on your drive is easy, as found in this forum post:

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/drivename/

Sweet relief.