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I used a borrowed Mac to transfer sensitive data directly between two USB thumb drives. Ideally, I'd like to not leave a single trace of the files and transfers on the borrowed Mac, but I understand that a modern OS might store a lot of tiny bits of information anywhere and everywhere. What are these on MacOS? (In my case, specifically, MacOS 10.13.6 High Sierra)

I noticed that I couldn't safely eject the drives because Spotlight were indexing them for a pretty long time. But as far as I have understood, these indexes are only placed on the external drives themselves, and not anywhere on the Mac. Is this assumption correct?

In short:

  • which processes might locally store information of externally mounted drives,
  • what kind of information are they storing, and
  • how can I "clean up" before giving the Mac back to its owner?
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  • Please don't cross-post to multiple SE sites. Pick one & stick to it, or flag for migration. Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site? - apple.stackexchange.com/questions/448760/…
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Oct 13, 2022 at 17:53
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    @Tetsujin Thank you for the advice, and I apologize for breaking etiquette. To explain: this was posted on the Apple stackexchange last week, but despite a few upvotes, no one answered. I'm not very familiar with the spaces, but I thought maybe those who know the answer might be more available here on Superuser than on the regular Apple site. Therefore I waited a week without answer before trying my luck here. I tried to flag it for migration now, but it seems I could only migrate it to apple.meta.stackexchange...?
    – genbatro
    Commented Oct 13, 2022 at 18:07
  • In principle yes, Spotlight is storing the index on the drive itself. But you can prevent Spotlight from indexing it at all by creating an empty file .metadata_never_index at the root of the drive. Now, I'm afraid that it's impossible to make sure that absolutely nothing will be left behind in the OS after you remove the drive...
    – PierU
    Commented Oct 13, 2022 at 20:49

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