Recently, I noticed my computer running mdimport. It didn't used to be there, now it's always there. man mdimport says it's used to unport metadata from files or file hierarchies, but I have no clue what this means. What does mdimport do, and what is the purpose for which it is running? It also always has a very high PID, near the top of the list, unlike most system processes with a very low PID>
Well ,after disabling mdimport or spotlight your computer doesn't use it anymore. you can do that later maybe. Mdimport/spotlight sometimes has difficulties with new files you have downloaded.
Better you look for downloads you did lately,mostly in the document-folder.
I had the same thing a few times.Yesterday it kept using 50% of my processor power every 15 seconds,my two processor- indicators went nuts,it looked like a rough sea.
In systems pref>spotlight I opened the privacy-widow and added my document-folder to it and after 15 seconds the mdimport was 'quiet' again. After that I took the document-folder back out of the privacy-window and surched for some files in document that I downloaded lately and put them all in the privacy-widow and again the mdimport was no longer using a lot of processor-power.So it had to be one of them. Then I took them all back out of it and then one at a time I put them in privacy,( luckely it were only two this time) and found the file that caused the high mdimport processors-usage and I kept,(and I will keep), it in privacy.This way you're still able to use the full power of mdimport/spotlight only it won't surch in that one file.
One thing : When you put the document-folder back out of privacy-window,spotlight has to 're-index' it again(with processors-usage) ,so you have to wait a while till that is done, otherwise your further surch will be distorted by this 're-indexing',better wait for half an hour before putting the lately downloaded files(in the document-folder) in the privacy-widow. The same when you put those back out of privacy-window( that will take less for 're-indexing') ,and the same when you put them one by one in privacy,but there the re-indexing will be even quicker.
