3

I know it's the spotlight indexing process, but it's been killing my HDD for the last few days and will not stop. The CPU usage is rather low but fs_usage shows that the mds process is doing something the whole time.

I'v tried force quitting it with kill -9 but it will just auto re-spawn and keep killing my HDD.

I'v added all my HDDs into the Spotlight privacy list as well as disabling indexing sudo mdutil -a -i off I'v done several restarts but it keeps on going.

Any ideas on how to stop it from opening and running?

Update:

I Managed to stop mds by the following command:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library//LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.*

But after a restart my HDD is still writing ~6MB/s and reading ~500KB/s Any ideas how to find out which process is consuming my HDD? It makes my computer incredible slow.

Update 2:

It only does 3MB/s write now that I have left the computer alone for a while.

Update 3:

It stopped just now for about 5 seconds, then started writing again. I was doing nothing different.

Here is a screenshot of the usage:

hdd usage

Mint
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  • You've got to nuke all the existing indexes, and just let Spotlight run once through completely. Also, 6MB/s is not a lot. On average, a hard drive will range from 30MB/s to over 80MB/s on higher-end hardware. Bite the bullet and let it run. –  Jan 05 '12 at 05:03
  • Could you please elaborate on what you mean by "killing my HDD?" – Dustin L. Jan 05 '12 at 05:01
  • @DustinStalin Just that it uses the HDD so intense that in turn the OS can't do it's day to day tasks. Like run my apps at any decent speed. – Mint Jan 05 '12 at 06:08
  • It's still doing a spotlight index? – Dustin L. Jan 05 '12 at 06:11
  • @RandolphWest I know it's not, but it must be writing to some odd places to cause such a slow down for 6MB/s, though now it's down to 3MB/s and my computer is still just as slow. mds isn't running anymore so it can't be spotlight. – Mint Jan 05 '12 at 06:12
  • @DustinStalin No. I can't find any mds process so I would think not. – Mint Jan 05 '12 at 06:12
  • Just a basic suggestion, but have you tried browsing through Activity Monitor? – Dustin L. Jan 05 '12 at 06:16
  • I was hoping that there would be an app that would tell you which process is reading/writing... I will have a look though Activity Monitor. – Mint Jan 05 '12 at 06:19
  • It appears to be postfix. Pretty sure this came with Lion Server, as I installed that recently and did try using it's Mail server. I did disable Lion Server as per Apple instructions but obviously that doesn't get rid of all the little programs it was using. – Mint Jan 05 '12 at 06:26
  • Temporary fix for other users sudo kill -9 $(ps -u _postfix -o "pid=") I'm working on a proper fix, as currently postfix will auto re-start it's processes and in turn starting writing to the HDD again. – Mint Jan 05 '12 at 06:28

2 Answers2

6

Try running the fs_usage in Terminal (must be run as root):

sudo fs_usage

This will start spitting out details of all your disk access right there in the Terminal window. It might go by quickly, but you should at least be able to see the app names accessing the disk.

More info and options for the fs_usage command here.

Vickash
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3

fseventer is an awesome frontend to the information that fs_usage provides, and enables a better understanding of filesystem activity much quicker than at the command line.

Jason Salaz
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