Does anyone know how to turn off the background process responsible for automatically indexing media content?

I'm trying to recover some data from a corrupted memory card - at least dd the data somewhere else. The garbage filenames apparently break some assumptions in the media player software, causing the program to thrash, soak up all resources, and eventually crash the machine. As soon as I stick the card in the slot, CPU goes to 100% and the machine is doomed.

Thanks,
Mat