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Archives => 2007 => Topic started by: Jack W on February 26, 2007, 11:28:24 AM

Title: mdimport
Post by: Jack W on February 26, 2007, 11:28:24 AM

So I turned on my external backup drive on my PowerBook G4 this morning.

The partitions mounted and the activity light started flashing and kept flashing and kept flashing ....

I asked myself "Self, What the heck is going on." Being the type that talks to myself, I had to have an answer, so I launched Activity Monitor. What a shock!

mdimport was consuming 30-80% of the cpu resources. and consuming . . .

I wasn't even connected to the network. And LilSnitch wasn't reporting anything, probably because I wasn't connected.

So the question is — What the heck is mdimport? And what does it do? And what was it doing? I figure there must be some guru out there that can provide answers!

Can I turn it off?

Jack

Title: mdimport
Post by: D76 on February 26, 2007, 11:40:30 AM

Found this at Macworld.

QUOTE

You know it’s there—why can’t Spotlight find it? The Tiger feature that promises to be your own personal Google does have its limitations, especially when searching your Mac’s most out-of-the-way corners. For greater control over the way Spotlight works, take a trip to Terminal. Its new mdfind , mdls , mdimport , and mdutil commands help you find files, control exactly what Spotlight indexes, and search by metadata. . . .

Run a search for

mdimport "os x"

A ton of stuff comes up. Somewhere in it there might be an answer as to why it's gobbling up the CPU cycles.

Title: mdimport
Post by: Xairbusdriver on February 26, 2007, 02:49:19 PM

You may have accidentally deleted the Spotlight info on that drive and it is now trying to rebuild the database. Once it is rebuilt, the activity ( cpu ) usage should drop, dramatically. Of course, you could also, disable Spotlight on that drive and never have this bother but you'd also lose the quick access of any stuff on it.

You can use Activity Monitor ( should be in your Utilities folder ) to see how much cpu work is going into Spotlights needs.

Title: mdimport
Post by: Jack W on February 26, 2007, 08:40:48 PM

ABD,

I use SuperDuper! to clone the 4 partitions on my PowerBook G4 to corresponding partitions on the external. I just did that yesterday for all the partitions including Macintosh HD.

How do I turn Spotlight off on the external? I use EasyFind anyway, and I would like to turn Spotlight off on the home boot also.

Also, how do I make EasyFind respond to Command-F?

Thanks!!

Title: mdimport
Post by: Xairbusdriver on February 26, 2007, 09:46:20 PM

To turn Spotlight Off, open its Pref Panel and click the "Privacy" tab. With your externals on-line, you should be able to click the "+" button and select the drive(s) you want to skip in the 'nav' window.

As for changing the command-f function, you may not want to. That still brings up a useful window with all kinds of options on what types/names/etc. to search for. Very similar to what we had in pre-X days.

However, you might be able to get another keyboard command to open EasyFind by using the Keyboard & Mouse pref panel.

If you use EasyFind a lot, why not just leave it running, you can easily hide it. And get it back in a snap with command-tab ( keep the command key down and press the tab key to get the list of running apps displayed, then each tab moves the selection one app to the right, shift-tab moves in the opposite direction ). The Dock is also a possibility, if you use that, but you'll have to stop typing and pick up the mouse.

Title: mdimport
Post by: Jack W on February 27, 2007, 10:49:56 AM

Xabd,

I've had Easyfind on my Dock for quite some time and use it regularly.

I'm just in the habit of doing Command-F, from Apps and Finder.

Maybe, as I get used to Spotlight, I will like it better.

I will take your suggestion and turn of the external drives from Spotlight.

Thanks for the advice!

Jack

Title: mdimport
Post by: tacit on February 27, 2007, 11:35:29 AM

QUOTE(Jack W @ Feb 26 2007, 05:28 PM) [snapback]120243[/snapback]

mdimport is the Spotlight disk indexing tool.

When mdimport begins using a great deal of the CPU and continues to use a lot of the CPU for a long time, this can often be an early sign that your hard drive is about to fail. The reason for this is that if mdimport finds a bad sector or some other disk error when it is building the index, it will continue to try to read the bad sector over and over and over again, consuming a great deal of CPU resources and causing a lot of disk activity in the process.

mdimport is a "canary in the coal mine" for impending disk failure. I would suggest you run Disk Utility and see what the SMART status is. I'd also suggest you make sure your backups are up to date.

Title: mdimport
Post by: Jack W on February 27, 2007, 11:52:11 AM

ABD,

I implemented your suggestion with Spotlight and deactivated the external partitions in Spotlight prefs. — Bingo!

Thanks!

Tacit,

SMART is not available on the external firewire drive.
BTW — This is my backup drive. I have no other alternatives at the present time.

I think I will try running TechToolPro on it. Thanks for the suggestion.

- Jack

Title: mdimport
Post by: Jack W on February 27, 2007, 04:25:42 PM

Update:

ABD,

Doing the Spotlight thing resolved the issue! - Thanks!

Tacit,

I ran TechTool Pro on the drive, including surface scan, which took 3.5 hrs. Four hrs later, I am happy to report NO ERRORS.

It appears the drive is 100% OK.

Back in Happy Land again. All is well.

- Jack

Title: mdimport
Post by: Xairbusdriver on February 27, 2007, 05:25:38 PM

Unfortunately most reports are only valid during the time they are being created!

Things never break while you watch them!

We had a short thread about some Google research earlier this month ( SMART IQ maybe lower than thought ). Here's a link to some of the results.
<http://www.extremetech.com/article2>

Techsurvivors

Archives => 2007 => Topic started by: Jack W on February 26, 2007, 11:28:24 AM