Spotlight (mds_stores) is writing hundreds of GBs of data to my hard drive after the Sequoia update.

[izzy0242mr]

I updated to Sequoia recently on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Some process called mds_stores (which Google says is a Spotlight process) seems to be causing a very high rate of writing to my hard drive. I never noticed this before Sequoia. Anyone else experiencing something similar? My Mac shows more than 400 GB of data written by this one process after just a few days of my laptop being on. I have not been downloading or moving lots of files and the laptop is put into Sleep mode at night.

I found a reddit thread about the issue and followed the instructions to disable Spotlight (sudo mdutil -a -i off) and the crazy amount of disk writing seems to have stopped, but I am not sure if others have found a better fix that doesn't involve crippling a core OS feature.

 

[aj8690]

Having the same, as well as mediaanalysisd extreme CPU usage while sleeping over a week after upgrading still. Getting annoying as my M2 Max MBP is red hot every time I go to use it.

 

[Patrice Brousseau]

Having the same, as well as mediaanalysisd extreme CPU usage while sleeping over a week after upgrading still. Getting annoying as my M2 Max MBP is red hot every time I go to use it.

Not good for SSD life!

 

[Fishrrman]

There's a simple solution (which I've done ever since spotlight was first introduced years and years ago):

Find Any File

apps.tempel.org

TURN OFF SPOTLIGHT, forever:

sudo mdutil -i off

Works for me.

For "searching", I'd highly recommend two FREE (and tiny) alternative apps:
EasyFind:

DEVONtechnologies | Needful Things

A little collection of free utilities for the Mac to make your life easier.

www.devontechnologies.com

and
Find Any File:

Find Any File

apps.tempel.org

 

[izzy0242mr]

There's a simple solution (which I've done ever since spotlight was first introduced years and years ago):

Find Any File

apps.tempel.org

TURN OFF SPOTLIGHT, forever:

sudo mdutil -i off

Works for me.

For "searching", I'd highly recommend two FREE (and tiny) alternative apps:
EasyFind:

DEVONtechnologies | Needful Things

A little collection of free utilities for the Mac to make your life easier.

www.devontechnologies.com

and
Find Any File:

Find Any File

apps.tempel.org

I personally like Spotlight and would prefer to keep using it. Do the alternatives you suggested replicate all features of Spotlight? Including:
- math calculations
- definition lookups
- web searches
- finding and launching apps
- being able to enter text into them, close the search window, and then reopen the search window with the entered text remaining in place? I actually use Spotlight for this last purpose extensively (say, type a note into Spotlight, switch apps, open up Spotlight and reference the note I just typed).

 

[gilby101]

Do the alternatives you suggested replicate all features of Spotlight?

Nowhere near!

 

[Fishrrman]

Again, I'll say it:
If you don't want gb's or terabytes of your disk space written to again and again and again and again and again (had enough?)... turn off spotlight and learn to search another way.

Math calculations? Don't need them (or can use calculator or a spreadsheet)
Definition lookups? Isn't this what the "Dictionary" app is for?
Web searches? I have about 10 different browsers that can do that.
Finding & launching apps? I have folders for both applications and utilities "in the dock".

 

[izzy0242mr]

Again, I'll say it:
If you don't want gb's or terabytes of your disk space written to again and again and again and again and again (had enough?)... turn off spotlight and learn to search another way.

Math calculations? Don't need them (or can use calculator or a spreadsheet)
Definition lookups? Isn't this what the "Dictionary" app is for?
Web searches? I have about 10 different browsers that can do that.
Finding & launching apps? I have folders for both applications and utilities "in the dock".

I just reinstalled the OS. Excessive data writing problem is gone.

I appreciate the suggestions, but I don't want to have to replace Spotlight with 3-5 different things all in different places. The reason I like Spotlight is that I can do all those tasks in a single place.

Suggesting otherwise is like saying "why have a smartphone to call, email, play music, be a calculator, and check your calendar when you can have a landline, a computer, a radio, a calculator, and a physical calendar all as separate items?" You're not wrong, but you're also missing the point of why people like me use them.

 

[gilby101]

In my case, the excessive writes are caused by medianalysisd and mds_stores repeatedly working on Photos libraries. So disabling file system Spotlight makes no difference.

I do have multiple libraries (my "system" photo library is small) and it is possible that this is only an issue with additional libraries.

I just reinstalled the OS. Excessive data writing problem is gone.

I am gradually working towards that.

 

[thebart]

I personally like Spotlight and would prefer to keep using it. Do the alternatives you suggested replicate all features of Spotlight? Including:
- math calculations
- definition lookups
- web searches
- finding and launching apps
- being able to enter text into them, close the search window, and then reopen the search window with the entered text remaining in place? I actually use Spotlight for this last purpose extensively (say, type a note into Spotlight, switch apps, open up Spotlight and reference the note I just typed).

Spotlight has decided to stop indexing the system drive and no matter what I do it won't turn on. Only thing I haven't done is an OS reinstall

But, all the other functions, like math and web search, still work. So you don't need spotlight for that