External disk activity

[jb]

iMac G5 rev.A OS 10.4.11

I sent the following message to SuperDuper:

<<I use SuperDuper weekly to make a Backup of my internal system onto an External Disk partition.

I have noticed that after the copy is complete and SuperDuper has quit, that my External Disc keeps “working” for 20 minutes or so as indicated by the pulsating of the Disk’s front panel LED. The External Disk is a 250GB Western Digital, and my Backup partition has a capacity of 74.72 GB, of which 42.51 GB is used.

I’m curious to know what is going on after SuperDuper quits. Are you aware of this? And do you know why this happens?>>

Their answer was:

<<Well, it's either Spotlight or your AntiVirus program, if you have one...>>

Well I don’t have an AntiVirus program, at least I don’t think so.

What do you guys think? Is it possible that Spotlight could be the cause of the post SuperDuper copy disk activity?

jb

[Paddy]

My external babbles away to itself doing various things too - during the day too. Probably Spotlight doing its thing - and in my case, there are a few file paths messed up because of switching the internal to external.

[pendragon]

JB,

Since the SD copy is identical to the original, there is little benefit from having Spotlight index them both. Ergo, you may care to preclude Spotlight from indexing the copied volume. If so:

1. Go to System Preferences
2. Open Spotlight
3. Select the Privacy tab
4. Click the Add (+) button and navigate to the backup volume, or drag the backup volume icon to the Spotlight window.

Also, one can tell if Spotlight is running (more than instantaneously) by looking at the Spotlight magnifying glass in the menu bar. If it’s indexing, a small dot will pulse in the middle of the lens.

HTH

[jb]

Thanks pengragon. That does it.

But tell me, how did you come to be in the know of this? Have you read some OS X manual that describes the various features of the OS?

Again I have to repeat myself, score another one for TS.

jb