spotlight (mds process) using over 100 cpu and 150mb of Real Memory

Yes, something similar is happening to me. All was fine for the first week after the Leopard upgrade, but as of yesterday afternoon (that's when I noticed it---hmm, wonder if it's after the 10.5.1 update), mdworker has been grinding away. I wouldn't care so much, but it really hits the drive hard all the time. Machine runs very hot and fans are usually on. Hasn't finished in well over 24 hours. Nothing relevant showing up in console... (it uses 30 to 40% of my CPU time).

Yes, this has quickly gone from bad to worse. My can count the number of times my laptop's fans have ever been on. Now they won't quit. I can hear the drive grinding away as well, which can't be good for it. Apple, help!

Yeah, me too. My finder shoots up to 100% in processes and mds keeps cranking up. It started when I started quicktime and it usually won't go off until I restart. I left it sitting this last time and it finally stopped after an hour or so. Not really sure, I just came back into the office and it was back to normal.

Is this still happening for folks? I'm noticing this too, after installing 10.5.1, and even after giving the computer 12 hours to finish the index. Anyone?

My disks, cpus, and fans are all getting spammed by mds and backupd right now. It has been occurring more lately. I do have some rather large video files hanging around. I wonder if the system is doing something with these large files.

I also have a huge problem when ever I have externals plugged in. I've got a 160, 250 and 500 that I use for archive and storage and when I plug them in my system goes to a crawl. I'm sure it's because of spot light but it takes for ever to get back to it's normal self. My system also dogs horribly when ever my computer has been sitting unused but on. The screen saver is on and when I try to get it out of that mode it takes for ever for the system to become responsive. It's not asleep just in screen saver mode and it just dogs!

Same here. I noticed it right after installing 10.5, not just the 10.5.1 update.

In my case its spotlight indexing pdf file contents. I have lots of pdfs (scientific literature / books etc), if I make these folders private to spotlight, the mds and afsserver processes go back to their normal cpu behaviour.

I have no idea how to solve the problem, only the workaround above.

And same here too: I have a Powerbook G4 1.33 ghz 12" with 768 mb ram and that ****** mds yesterday started to get 100% of CPU usage and about 500 mb of ram, almost freezing the GUI, so the system was not usable. The only workaround I found is to disable Spotlight( sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist ), otherwise the pb is as useful as a paper holder. Hope to find a solution soon.

Sam problem here.

Used Spotless 2.0, disabled Spotlight and rebooted. Deleted Entire Index Directory. Restarted Spotlight. Stil 100% Utilization even after letting it run for 24x7 for 7 days.

Thinking so sort of corrupttion, I ran Disk Utilities and Disk Warrior 4. No issues found. Repeated the above process (disabled Spotlight, deleted indexes) still 100% utilization.

Stopped by the Apple store. They did Disk Warrior, cleared out the cache files, added some bigger directories to the privacy list of Spotlight (like my Fusion directory). After 5 days of indexing, mds is still 100% CPU.

Nothing in Console, other then the start and stop of mds.

Is there a way to find out where mds is running? Like a strace under linux?

Really would like to get this resolved. Any recommendations?

Are you running Time Machine?

How do you clear the Spotlight cache as someone suggested earlier?

i was getting this same thing all evening, post reboot. mds was running at 100%, even up to 180% at times. the cpu was at 83 degrees and the fan blasting at 6k revs. the machine was unresponsive..so i dug..
i whittled it down to a few things, removed my ext harddrive, stopped indexing on fonts and applications. nada.
so i tried to remove the one thing that was still on my machine. a dvd-rw.
wouldnt budge. couldnt remove through normal eject, nor through toast titanium. being a macbook has no pinhole i tried removing through disc utility. got the same error as when trying to eject. "the drive is in use". by what exactly? it's a fresh reboot, so the only thing looking at it would have to be an auto started program. ie, spotlight.
whilst still in disc utility, i also noticed the "files" on the dvd-rw was odd. infact, it read as 486billion files. now, there were 4 folders on this dvd-rw, with several work related files on them, and an episode of the office. nowhere near 486billion files there. i had added these files using my work based xp machine. so, i basketted all my eggs. now, to remove the dvd.
i rebooted, with a credit card in the drive, and my finger on the eject button. one of those things worked as the dvd popped out before leopard booted. turned out i was right. the machine booted up, and MDS was now at 0.0% and the cpu on both cores is now idling at 7% as i type this.
check your dvd's is all i can say...

No I have time machine disabled.

Just curious, what did you ask if I had time machine running?