On A New iMac i7, 3.4, Does Spotlight and Crash Plan Slow it Down?

[kapalua12]

The title says it all..

If Crash plan is constantly updating versions or backups, does it slow down a state of the art new iMac?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Open Activity Monitor and select All Processes and then sort by CPU to show you the process(es) slowing down your Mac or speeding up your fan(s) or causing more heat.

Using Activity Monitor to show you CPU and RAM usage​

If Crashplan or MDS does show up there eating a lot of CPU cycles (100 to 800 %), then it is using a lot of resources, but depending on your workload, you will not really notice it, as you have quite a fast CPU.

I also have an i7 with 3.5 GHz and I hardly notice any slowdowns, even when the CPU is almost fully used by one more CPU hungry applications and fully using it. There is enough room for the currently active process (the application(s) you currently use) to not slow down, unless you use CPU intensive tasks and could benefit from the saved minutes the extra CPU bandwidth could give you if Crashplan and Spotlight (MDS) are in fact hogging all available CPU.

 

[kapalua12]

Open Activity Monitor and select All Processes and then sort by CPU to show you the process(es) slowing down your Mac or speeding up your fan(s) or causing more heat.

Using Activity Monitor to show you CPU and RAM usage​

If Crashplan or MDS does show up there eating a lot of CPU cycles (100 to 800 %), then it is using a lot of resources, but depending on your workload, you will not really notice it, as you have quite a fast CPU.

I also have an i7 with 3.5 GHz and I hardly notice any slowdowns, even when the CPU is almost fully used by one more CPU hungry applications and fully using it. There is enough room for the currently active process (the application(s) you currently use) to not slow down, unless you use CPU intensive tasks and could benefit from the saved minutes the extra CPU bandwidth could give you if Crashplan and Spotlight (MDS) are in fact hogging all available CPU.

Thanks. CPU usage is virtually zero with occasional spikes of certain processes to 4 to 5 percent just for a few seconds. I have not yet installed Crash Plan but it would seem there is every good reason to do so, and no reason not to do so with this 3.4, i7 processor and 32 GB of memory.

Thanks for your help!

 

[flynz4]

Thanks. CPU usage is virtually zero with occasional spikes of certain processes to 4 to 5 percent just for a few seconds. I have not yet installed Crash Plan but it would seem there is every good reason to do so, and no reason not to do so with this 3.4, i7 processor and 32 GB of memory.

Thanks for your help!

I have the same machine and you will not notice any slowdowns after spotlight finishes its initial indexing. Nothing to worry about.

Assuming that you get either the FD or 768 GB SSD... Operations will be nearly "instantaneous".

/Jim

 

[kapalua12]

I have the same machine and you will not notice any slowdowns after spotlight finishes its initial indexing. Nothing to worry about.

Assuming that you get either the FD or 768 GB SSD... Operations will be nearly "instantaneous".

/Jim

I have the 768 SSD. Thanks for the info.

My few PC's that will be on the Crash Plan Family plan also are i7's and run raid 0 SSD Operating System volumes that would be used to backup data from Windows 7 Pro.

 

[RyanatCode42]

Thanks. CPU usage is virtually zero with occasional spikes of certain processes to 4 to 5 percent just for a few seconds. I have not yet installed Crash Plan but it would seem there is every good reason to do so, and no reason not to do so with this 3.4, i7 processor and 32 GB of memory.

CrashPlan also allows you to limit what percentage of your CPU it is permitted to use, both when you're present or away from your computer. These limits are changed from the Settings>General section of the CrashPlan application.

If you were seeing higher CPU usage than the limits you've set, something is wrong, contact crashplan.com/helpdesk.

Ryan at Code 42

 

[talmy]

From my experience, CrashPlan uses very little CPU but it is somewhat of a memory hog. A native client (rather than Java) is supposed to come out later this year which will presumably have a much smaller footprint.

If you have a slow "up" speed on your Internet connection, CrashPlan can hurt your Internet access, but that can be throttled back.

Spotlight slows the system down initially, but after it indexes the system you don't notice it. Same is true for TimeMachine.