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Spotlight is repeatedly re-indexing / Hard drive constantly writing

mrlunch

mrlunch

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 30, 2006
28
0
San Diego, CA
I have a two week old 20" iMac 2.4 running Leopard w/ 1 gig of RAM. Ever since I installed Leopard (few days after purchase) the hard drive is constantly writing. It's not very loud but I can hear the drive and compared to my MacBookPro it's definitely working harder. Any ideas?
 
After indexing everything, it will be quieter, but have a look in Activity monitor, to see what is doing and if is for sure spotlight. When I upgraded to Leo, it made the same, I thought something was wrong (I have around 100GB of movies in here), it took around 1hr till completion.

But I'll reinstall clean, this upgrade does not satisface me, shutdown takes for ever.. And I have random problems with CiscoVPN, and X11 apps.
 
ale500 said:
After indexing everything, it will be quieter, but have a look in Activity monitor, to see what is doing and if is for sure spotlight. When I upgraded to Leo, it made the same, I thought something was wrong (I have around 100GB of movies in here), it took around 1hr till completion.

But I'll reinstall clean, this upgrade does not satisface me, shutdown takes for ever.. And I have random problems with CiscoVPN, and X11 apps.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it's been doing this for days and I have very little data on the hard drive the computer is only a few weeks old. I'm new to macs what should I look for in the activity monitor?
 
Well, I read the thread and now seems clear what can be happening, just I do not know why.

Have you checked the console (Applications/utilities/console) to see where spotlight could be hanging/crashing ?

Did you ran Verify Disk (Disk Utility)/Repair permissions ?

Try to clean the machine from old/unused programs: Not only from Applications, but also from /Library/Application Support and Caches both on the root and on your user, get rid of old configuration files. That may help.
 
ale500 said:
Have you checked the console (Applications/utilities/console) to see where spotlight could be hanging/crashing ?
Click to expand...
Here's a snippet of a long list of something from going on in console:

Nov 12 23:52:28 Macintosh ReportCrash[2666]: Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/mds_2007-11-12-235226_Macintosh.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0
Nov 12 23:53:00 Macintosh ReportCrash[2671]: Formulating crash report for process mds[2667]
Nov 12 23:53:00 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10a3a0.mdworker[2668]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:53:00 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cc80.mdworker[2670]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:53:00 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cac0.mdworker[2669]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:53:00 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.metadata.mds[2667]): Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
Nov 12 23:53:00 Macintosh mds[2672]: (/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/9A285684-2061-4212-B186-56B95ACE8BD7)(Error) IndexCI in ContentIndexOpenBulk:No index
Nov 12 23:53:01 Macintosh ReportCrash[2671]: Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/mds_2007-11-12-235259_Macintosh.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0
Nov 12 23:53:50 Macintosh ReportCrash[2678]: Formulating crash report for process mds[2672]
Nov 12 23:53:50 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10c930.mdworker[2673]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:53:50 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10aac0.mdworker[2674]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:53:50 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.metadata.mds[2672]): Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
Nov 12 23:53:50 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cbb0.mdworker[2675]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:53:51 Macintosh mds[2679]: (/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/9A285684-2061-4212-B186-56B95ACE8BD7)(Error) IndexCI in ContentIndexOpenBulk:No index
Nov 12 23:53:51 Macintosh ReportCrash[2678]: Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/mds_2007-11-12-235348_Macintosh.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0
Nov 12 23:54:29 Macintosh /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mdworker[2682]: FontImporter: Validation failed - "/Applications/Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive/Office/Fonts/Georgia".
Nov 12 23:54:29 Macintosh /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mdworker[2682]: FontImporter: Validation Result - "<CFArray 0x168250 [0xa051d1a0]>{type = mutable-small, count = 4, values = (\n 0 : <CFString 0x674f54 [0xa051d1a0]>{contents = "kATSFontTestSeverityInformation"}\n 1 : <CFString 0x674f44 [0xa051d1a0]>{contents = "kATSFontTestSeverityTechnicalError"}\n 2 : <CFString 0x674f34 [0xa051d1a0]>{contents = "kATSFontTestSeverityMinorError"}\n 3 : <CFString 0x674f14 [0xa051d1a0]>{contents = "kATSFontTestSeverityFatalError"}\n)}".
Nov 12 23:54:30 Macintosh /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mdworker[2682]: FontImporter: Validation failed - "/Applications/Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive/Office/Fonts/MS Gothic.ttf".
Nov 12 23:54:30 Macintosh /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mdworker[2682]: FontImporter: Validation Result - "<CFArray 0x1688b0 [0xa051d1a0]>{type = mutable-small, count = 4, values = (\n 0 : <CFString 0x674f54 [0xa051d1a0]>{contents = "kATSFontTestSeverityInformation"}\n 1 : <CFString 0x674f44 [0xa051d1a0]>{contents = "kATSFontTestSeverityTechnicalError"}\n 2 : <CFString 0x674f34 [0xa051d1a0]>{contents = "kATSFontTestSeverityMinorError"}\n 3 : <CFString 0x674f14 [0xa051d1a0]>{contents = "kATSFontTestSeverityFatalError"}\n)}".
Nov 12 23:54:33 Macintosh ReportCrash[2685]: Formulating crash report for process mds[2679]
Nov 12 23:54:33 Macintosh mdworker[2682]: (Fatal) Import: Importer mach message failure on request work: (-308) (ipc/mig) server died
Nov 12 23:54:33 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10c830.mdworker[2681]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:54:33 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.metadata.mds[2679]): Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
Nov 12 23:54:33 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cbb0.mdworker[2683]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:54:33 Macintosh mds[2686]: (/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/9A285684-2061-4212-B186-56B95ACE8BD7)(Error) IndexCI in ContentIndexOpenBulk:No index
Nov 12 23:54:33 Macintosh ReportCrash[2685]: Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/mds_2007-11-12-235432_Macintosh.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0
Nov 12 23:55:07 Macintosh ReportCrash[2692]: Formulating crash report for process mds[2686]
Nov 12 23:55:07 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10c830.mdworker[2687]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:55:07 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10c9f0.mdworker[2690]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:55:07 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cbb0.mdworker[2691]): Exited: Terminated
Nov 12 23:55:07 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.metadata.mds[2686]): Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
Nov 12 23:55:07 Macintosh mds[2695]: (/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/9A285684-2061-4212-B186-56B95ACE8BD7)(Error) IndexCI in ContentIndexOpenBulk:No index
Nov 12 23:55:07 Macintosh ReportCrash[2692]: Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/mds_2007-11-12-235505_Macintosh.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0

ale500 said:
Did you ran Verify Disk (Disk Utility)/Repair permissions ?
Click to expand...
I will try this.

ale500 said:
Try to clean the machine from old/unused programs: Not only from Applications, but also from /Library/Application Support and Caches both on the root and on your user, get rid of old configuration files. That may help.
Click to expand...
The machine is only a few weeks old don't really have old old/unused programs. I come from a Windows world and cleaning off old programs was done from a uninstaller. With a mac do I just drag the program to the trash can and it will clean it off my system?
 
mrlunch said:
The machine is only a few weeks old don't really have old old/unused programs. I come from a Windows world and cleaning off old programs was done from a uninstaller. With a mac do I just drag the program to the trash can and it will clean it off my system?
Click to expand...
No, dragging the application to the trash deletes the app, but there are a few preference, config, and support files that are left behind. You would have to find and delete those files manually (usually a quick spotlight for the app's name will do the trick). Although, usually leaving these files behind isn't a problem.

mrlunch said:
reinstalled leopard and it appears to have fixed my spotlight problem.
Click to expand...
For anyone who may be having the same problem, what type of reinstall was that (archive & install, erase & install, etc.)?
 
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