mds_stores search kill

[whatnot]

I've recently noticed in activity monitor, that mds_stores was gobbling up hundreds of gigabytes under 'disk', and 700% or something equally ridiculous under 'cpu'. I have tons of images on an external drive which I need access to at all times, and I've given up on searching for them through spotlight, because I need to see the file names - like I used to! - not bloody thumbnails.

so I did the cursory googling, I went and added my external SSD to 'privacy' in spotlight settings, and mds_stores has gone down to 3.66 and 0.2, respectively.

what it also seems to have done is make searching my SSD impossible even through finder - which of these two evils am I supposed to choose? if I exclude the SSD from searches, I could in theory browse it manually, but it's a hassle, so how do I stop it from eating away at resources?

 

[Fishrrman]

What I'm posting below worked in previous versions of the OS to prevent spotlight from indexing drives.

I don't know if it STILL works.
But you can try this anyway.
Even if it doesn't work, it won't hurt anything.

Open Text Edit.
Create a new, empty file (should happen when you open it).
Type something simple in the file, such as "stop spotlight indexing".
Now, save this to the "top level" (not in any folder) of the drive you don't want indexed.
Give the file this exact name:

".metadata_never_index"

Do not include the quotation marks.
But... DO include the period at the beginning.

Finder may warn you that including the period makes the file invisible.
THIS IS WHAT WE WANT, so yes, include it.

You can check if the file ended up where you want by using this keyboard command:
Command-Shift-"period" (command-shift-.)
This toggles on/off viewing of invisible files.
The newly-created "never_index" file should be "near the top" (in list view).

That used to work. When spotlight "sees" a drive with this file, it refrains from indexing that volume.
Again, I don't know whether or not it still does.
Perhaps others will comment.

 

[whatnot]

What I'm posting below worked in previous versions of the OS to prevent spotlight from indexing drives.

I don't know if it STILL works.
But you can try this anyway.
Even if it doesn't work, it won't hurt anything.

Open Text Edit.
Create a new, empty file (should happen when you open it).
Type something simple in the file, such as "stop spotlight indexing".
Now, save this to the "top level" (not in any folder) of the drive you don't want indexed.
Give the file this exact name:

".metadata_never_index"

Do not include the quotation marks.
But... DO include the period at the beginning.

Finder may warn you that including the period makes the file invisible.
THIS IS WHAT WE WANT, so yes, include it.

You can check if the file ended up where you want by using this keyboard command:
Command-Shift-"period" (command-shift-.)
This toggles on/off viewing of invisible files.
The newly-created "never_index" file should be "near the top" (in list view).

That used to work. When spotlight "sees" a drive with this file, it refrains from indexing that volume.
Again, I don't know whether or not it still does.
Perhaps others will comment.

ok, thanks, but I don't really think I want it to stop indexing completely, or does this method leave finder search unaffected? given that it's reliant on spotlight index, I suspect this would kill it too.

I don't understand why is it indexing constantly, unless there's another reason for the blown up metrics, is it maybe because I'm using this app which has my image files on SSD indexed, and while it's on, spotlight is playing catch up? I have no idea.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I don't understand why is it indexing constantly, unless there's another reason for the blown up metrics, is it maybe because I'm using this app which has my image files on SSD indexed, and while it's on, spotlight is playing catch up?"

From the moment that spotlight was first introduced by Apple (years ago, in the platter-based HDD days), I didn't want it constantly messing with my drives.

So I turned it OFF back then, and have LEFT IT OFF, forever.

If I need to "search" for something, I use one of the following two tools:
- EasyFind
- Find Any File
Both are small, easy to use, and free.

My opinion only.
Others will disagree.
Some will disagree vehemently.

 

[!!!]

what it also seems to have done is make searching my SSD impossible even through finder - which of these two evils am I supposed to choose? if I exclude the SSD from searches, I could in theory browse it manually, but it's a hassle, so how do I stop it from eating away at resources?

Spotlight, the thing you open with CMD-space that's a search bar in the center of your screen, is the same thing as Spotlight, the service that indexes all your files and lets you search in a Finder window. When you exclude your drive from Spotlight, you exclude it from both.

I know it's frustrating that they've made the pop-up window useless for photo searches. Complain to Apple.

As for the resource usage, it should go down once it's done indexing your drive. You don't tell us how much data is on your drive so we can't know how long it should take, but if it never ends you can delete it, restart, and let it reindex.

That used to work. When spotlight "sees" a drive with this file, it refrains from indexing that volume.
Again, I don't know whether or not it still does.

I don't believe this works anymore, unfortunately. Apple seems hell-bent on removing this ability, which is a shame considering the Spotlight Privacy list often gets reset.

Both are small, easy to use, and free.

Neither of them come anywhere close to the feature set of Spotlight. There is no way to search by photo metadata, or anything like that.

 

[whatnot]

I didn't want it constantly messing with my drives.

So I turned it OFF back then, and have LEFT IT OFF, forever.

cool story. in High Sierra, I haven't noticed it mess up anything, nor was it running any processes into overdrive - it was rather useful, until now.

 

[whatnot]

As for the resource usage, it should go down once it's done indexing your drive. You don't tell us how much data is on your drive so we can't know how long it should take, but if it never ends you can delete it, restart, and let it reindex.

I didn't know data size matters, there's like 500-ish gb on a 2tb drive, but I'm only actively accessing about 1/5 of it, in that I have an app which has a big chunk of what's on the drive indexed, but I don't think the bloated mbs usage is because of it, especislly as I'm not changing anything on the drive while accessing it through the app, so there's not really much to re-index.

and I haven't made any major changes to the drive for weeks now, so why would spotlight keep spinning itself into a CPU frenzy?

and do you mean 'delete' the process in activity monitor? will it restart itself after reboot? I think when I set up this mac, it took a couple of days max to get a 3/5 full 500 gb drive all indexed. I might remove the SSD from 'privacy' and give it another chance.

 

[!!!]

I didn't know data size matters, there's like 500-ish gb on a 2tb drive

The number of files certainly matter, the more files you have the more files it has to scan. And the file size matters too, for the files Spotlight can index the contents of.

and I haven't made any major changes to the drive for weeks now, so why would spotlight keep spinning itself into a CPU frenzy?

Spotlight can corrupt its database, or the process can get stuck on a bad file or otherwise become messed up. It's not perfect software.

and do you mean 'delete' the process in activity monitor? will it restart itself after reboot?

No, I mean delete the Spotlight folder (.Spotlight-V100/) at the root of the drive. You can kill the mds processes, but occasionally this has resulted in Spotlight (the UI) becoming non-responsive until a full reboot. You're supposed to be able to kill most background processes and macOS will relaunch them as necessary, but again, imperfect software.

 

[whatnot]

No, I mean delete the Spotlight folder (.Spotlight-V100/) at the root of the drive. You can kill the mds processes, but occasionally this has resulted in Spotlight (the UI) becoming non-responsive until a full reboot. You're supposed to be able to kill most background processes and macOS will relaunch them as necessary, but again, imperfect software.

ok, but deleting above will presumably wipe the index across both drives, int and ext? honestly, I've been fiddling with my machine ever since I bought it a few months ago, and my needs aren't even that complex.

I think high mds usage is to do with my external drive only, if I'm not on the app (tropy, since you ask), the numbers are negligible, as soon as the drive flashes up indicating it's in use, mds goes into overdrive.

I removed the SSD from 'privacy' box in spotlight settings yesterday, spotlight took about an hour to index it, and while it was at it, I had almost a dozen processes, all under the same title with pdf in it, eating a combined 300% CPU between them - over at apple 'community', the advice is to have less pdfs (!).

I suspect that ever since they stuffed spotlight with thumbnails and 99 other commands/functions, it has become this bloated, resource guzzling mess - as I already mentioned, it was a breeze in High Sierra.

down with this sort of thing!

 

[!!!]

ok, but deleting above will presumably wipe the index across both drives, int and ext?

The folder is per drive, each drive has its own index.

I removed the SSD from 'privacy' box in spotlight settings yesterday, spotlight took about an hour to index it,

Well if it's fine now then there's nothing wrong with it, don't worry about it.

while it was at it, I had almost a dozen processes, all under the same title with pdf in it

Yep, that's a new thing. It's trying to scan the contents of your PDFs.

 

[whatnot]

The folder is per drive, each drive has its own index.

oh, so .Spotlight-V100/ would be in some kind of SSD's library folder? because it's not out there in the open.

Well if it's fine now then there's nothing wrong with it, don't worry about it.

I need to check if it's not purely SSD or Crucial or OS related, because I checked with Tropy support, and apparently any indexing the app is doing is all contained within the project file, so I don't see how it would affect a system-wide one, and the mds only gets hyperactive when I'm browsing externally.

Yep, that's a new thing. It's trying to scan the contents of your PDFs.

I think it would do that previously too, in that it would list pdfs with the keyword in them, but maybe now it's going full in, as in scanning even those pdfs, esp. older, which wouldn't allow a text search, at least in Adobe viewer. thankfully it's gone dormant.