What apps are doing I/O on external disks

I am running Mohave 10.14.6 on a Mac Mini. At times, I see the I/O lights flashing excessively on my G Drive disks. I know that I can tell if MacOS is indexing those disks by using Spotlight, but when Spotlight does not show indexing, I don't know how to determine what is causing all the I/O. I have explored Activity Monitor but that does not specify which disks are being accessed.

Is there a Bash UNIX command or shell script that will display which apps or processes are accessing specific disks?

Mac mini, macOS 10.14

Posted on Oct 27, 2021 4:49 PM

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1 reply

Jack-19

Level 8

46,248 points

Oct 30, 2021 11:13 PM in response to agreenberg19

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities.

There will always be activity on external drives. This is anytime the Mac interacts with it. This could be to verify it is still connected properly, index the drive, clean-up the drive, etc.

There's nothing to worry about.

Jack

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What apps are doing I/O on external disks

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