Disable Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.6
Disabling Spotlight in Snow Leopard is straightforward. Launch the Terminal and type the following command:
sudo mdutil -a -i offThis tells the Spotlight manager to disable all indexing on all volumes. The command requires your administrative password.
Re-enabling Spotlight is just as easy — reverse the command:
sudo mdutil -a -i onSpotlight indexing will be back on and work as usual.
--- osxdaily
To completely stop the Spotlight daemon:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist