I use iStatsMenu to keep an eye on my RAM and CPU usage on my Mac Book Pro (which is no slouch with a 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo Processor and 4 GB of RAM). There are three processes always seem to peg my machine:
- Firefox
- TextMate
- and something called mds
Saving my work and restarting Firefox and Textmate is a no brainer, but I didn’t know what or how to address the problem with mds. Come to find out, mds is responsible for indexing in Spotlight. If its thrashing your CPU and hogging up your RAM, you may need to verify your dives with Disk Utility.app, but for a quick fix run this in Terminal:
sudo mdutil -a -v -i off
This will turn off indexing and you should see an immediate drop in usage and let you get back to work.
This is how you turn off Spotlight Indexing.
For a more “permanent” solution, Locate the two files /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist and com.apple.mdwrite.plist. Move them someplace else (I just made a folder called “backup” in the LaunchAgents directory) and reboot.
This will stop Spotlight and indexing completely and remove the Spotlight icon from the menu bar. Who needs it with Quicksilver, anyway? I’ve been told that some apps’ search functionality won’t work without Spotlight indexing but I’ve yet to encounter any broken apps. Proceed with caution as YMMV.
Good tips, thanks.
Time Machine will fail. It needs Spotlight’s indexing for its drive for some reason.
Good Point. When I originally posted this, I wasn’t using time machine. I am now, and haven’t disabled MDS.