external HD and cpu activity

[ppnkg]

I just got an external HD (160GB USB Freecom) and I noticed that when it's connected to my mac, there's a great deal of system activity (which is annoying because the fans go crazy). Activity monitor shows a lot of blue lines (niced tasks) which go down (and everything becomes normal and quiet again) when I disconnect the HD.

Anybody else has this problem? Any solutions? The thing is, the HD should be connected because I want to use it for automatic backups. If I connect and disconnect every time, it would defeat the purpose of automatic backups...

EDIT: I decided not to be too lazy and wait for an answer here, so after investigating a little, it seems it's spotlight indexing the backup volume.

 

[iVersa]

Did you find a solution? Can you set spotlight not to index it?

 

[BilltheCat]

I am about to add an external drive. How to get the spotlight to stop indexing it, and Do-I-Want -to-even-do-that?

 

[Billicus]

I am about to add an external drive. How to get the spotlight to stop indexing it, and Do-I-Want -to-even-do-that?

You can just add the HD to the Privacy Tab under Spotlight in System Preferences if you don't want it indexed.