Currently `top` reports `MEM=93G`!!! It's also using 100% of my CPU all the time. Doesn't that seem outrageous? What can I do about it?
Previous question about this seem to remain unanswered. The little information there is suggest that time machine is a possible cause. But there too, there is no information about remedies. I'm looking for a remedy, not an explanation of why it's happening.
MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 10.15
This can occur for several reasons. Here are things you can do:
(1) Boot into Safe Mode, holding shift key until the boot completes, which can be 10 minutes or more while your Mac does some housekeeping and any file system repairs, if needed. The reboot normally and check for the issue.
Disk problems or a failing disk can cause what you have seen with fseventsd
(2) Boot into Recovery (COMMAND-R when booting), use Disk Utility to check your disk with First Aid. Also, check your backup disk with Disk Utility First Aid, the external drive can be checked running Disk Utility from your Mac booted up normally.
(3) Open System Preferences => Spotlight and select the Privacy tab. Select your primary disk and add it to the Privacy area, which tells Spotlight not to index it. Close System Preferences, then reopen it and remove your disk from the Privacy area. This should force a new re-indexing of your disk to occur, which could take ~ hours.
Problems with the index, which is how files are located, can cause the fseventsd problem.
You can also force a re-index of the external drive used for backups. That will take a long time also.
To check your drives physical state, you may need to download and run a utility like DriveDX. That will identify any physical problems with the disk.
This can occur for several reasons. Here are things you can do:
(1) Boot into Safe Mode, holding shift key until the boot completes, which can be 10 minutes or more while your Mac does some housekeeping and any file system repairs, if needed. The reboot normally and check for the issue.
Disk problems or a failing disk can cause what you have seen with fseventsd
(2) Boot into Recovery (COMMAND-R when booting), use Disk Utility to check your disk with First Aid. Also, check your backup disk with Disk Utility First Aid, the external drive can be checked running Disk Utility from your Mac booted up normally.
(3) Open System Preferences => Spotlight and select the Privacy tab. Select your primary disk and add it to the Privacy area, which tells Spotlight not to index it. Close System Preferences, then reopen it and remove your disk from the Privacy area. This should force a new re-indexing of your disk to occur, which could take ~ hours.
Problems with the index, which is how files are located, can cause the fseventsd problem.
You can also force a re-index of the external drive used for backups. That will take a long time also.
To check your drives physical state, you may need to download and run a utility like DriveDX. That will identify any physical problems with the disk.
fseventsd is using a huge amount of memory
