Lion using all my memory

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Level 2

245 points

Lion using all my memory

Alright so since upgrading to lion i have noticed that it is using way too much memory than it should. I have 12gb of memory, which is way more than someone would ever need. I have google chrome, textedit, mail, activity monitor, and quicktime open. But the only ones that are actually doing something is google chrome and quicktime. it is affecting my whole computer and making it run so slow, even while im typing this it is very delayed and when i try to do anything even change tabs i get the pinwheel. i mean come on i have 35mb of free memory and 15gb of page outs. im not sure why i need so much inactive memory either. if someone can tell me if this is normal or not and a way to fix it it would be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7), 21.5 inch. October 2009 version

Posted on Jul 28, 2011 6:21 PM

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Answer 1

iDam

Level 1

20 points

Jul 28, 2011 6:58 PM in response to Alex403

I have a simliar problem, only it's Mail that sometimes consumes all my memory.

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Answer 2

Jul 28, 2011 7:21 PM in response to Alex403

How long has it been since you upgraded to Lion? If you have a heck of a lot of files, it's likely Spotlight going nutz indexing everything. If you have a Time Machine drive that can get a bit crazy too right after an upgrade.

If you very recently upgraded, try setting your Energy Saver settings to prevent the Mac from sleeping and then let it run overnight. Reboot in the morning and see if things are better. Your memory usage in the screen shot shows the large blue section consuming all your RAM. That is Inactive memory. What's really going on is a disk cache process is consuming your RAM and the disk activity is likely really high too. Since it is likely Spotlight, etc. let it run over overnight.

If it is Spotlight there should be a dot in the middle of the magnifying glass on your menu bar, top right of your screen. The dot indicates it is indexing your disk. All the indexes need to be rebuilt after the upgrade and you likely put the computer to sleep or shut it down and it's not had enough time to cleanup after the upgrade.

You can actually clear that disk cache by opening the Terminal and typing the command "purge" and hitting the enter key. You'll see that large blue part of the pie chart change to green in seconds. You should not have to use the purge command as the memory will recover on it's own and deleting the cache might slow you down as you are defeating the purpose of the cache. It's not a bad thing to have Inactive memory maxed. The slow performance is more likely heavy disk access. Check out what your Disk Activity is doing. If you see a whole lot of Red peaks and valley's then I would think it's Spotlight.

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Answer 3

Jul 28, 2011 7:29 PM in response to Alex403

I had a similar problem. I reset pram and it seemed to help a bit. I seem to be getting the kind of lag you experience when timemachine is backing up.

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Answer 4

Alex403 Author

Level 2

245 points

Jul 28, 2011 9:10 PM in response to Alex403

yeah i upgraded the day it came out and dont have that many files so the spotlight isnt indexing, and theres litttle to no disk activity, none being written. so if it is not indexing can i use the purge command and it will not do anything bad? or does that delete the index or something making spotlight useless or what?

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Answer 5

macsepp

Level 1

20 points

Nov 20, 2011 1:31 PM in response to Alex403

I have the same issue. I have a MBP 17'', 2.8 C2D, 4GB of RAM and plenty of disk space left. I was working in Final Cut Pro, Photoshop and Nuke while watching TV in the background with this laptop before I upgraded to Lion. I updated quite a while ago and there is no Time Machine or Spotlight running in the background.

Now I have iTunes, Safari and Mail open and it gives me the color-wheel just trying to display an Email or switching a Tab in Safari. My iPhone is faster then this.

So with these 3 Apps open I need 2GB active, 830 MB reserved and 1.1GB inactive RAM and additional 1.35 GB of Swap Space.

What's going on?

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