Mail in Mavericks constantly "writing changes to disk"

Question

Mail in Mavericks constantly "writing changes to disk"

Since upgrading to Mavericks my Apple Mail program has been constantly chugging away in the background "writing changes to disk." Each time I check, the Activity window indicates that there are literally tens of thousands more messages that need changing. At first I thought this was a painful but necessary transition from Mountain Lion to Mavericks...but it's been going on and on and on for more than a week now. All I did was upgrade to Mavericks using the recommended App Store process. I made no other changes to my system. Any ideas about what's happening? Better yet, any ideas about how to stop it? Thanks.

iMac (27-inch Late 2009), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 30, 2013 1:27 PM

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Answer 1

jracine

Level 1

0 points

Mar 21, 2014 4:17 PM in response to Georg Heimdal

TRY THIS FIX - worked for me 100%

Check you setting on gmail (the website). Go to Settings, then Labels.

Make sur there are no "/" in the path of your mailboxes (first column).

Then I recommend you also do a sync (control-click your main inbox in Mail).

That's it, as silly as it sounds.

Good luck

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Answer 2

CFnyc

Level 1

10 points

May 4, 2014 10:11 AM in response to jracine

I think you're on to something, jracine!

Following your advice, I found I had a label named "[Imap]/Drafts" (what created that label I have no idea), which I removed. After about a day, I had not seen any "writing changes to disk."

That wasn't very compelling, though, as how could I be sure it wouldn't happen after two days, or three days, or later?

So I recreated the "[Imap]/Drafts" label on Gmail (with "Show in IMAP" checked) and didn't even bother to apply it to any messages. Then I instructed Apple Mail to "Get All New Mail" (Shift-Command-N). Within seconds, the activity window was showing "Updating cache directory" and "Writing changes to disk" on thousands of messages.

This is reproducible over and over. After recreating the label, "Get All New Mail" becomes tediously slow, and Activity Monitor shows a surge in disk I/O. But after removing the label, "Get All New Mail" takes just a few seconds.

Thank you!

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Answer 3

May 4, 2014 2:18 PM in response to CFnyc

CFnyc...Thanks for the attention. I did what you suggested, but I'm still having the same "writing changes to disk" problem. Have yet to restart Chrome, Mail, or my iMac. Maybe that will jolt something and put your solution into play.

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Answer 4

May 6, 2014 1:26 PM in response to CFnyc

CFnyc...Looks like your suggestion works. Got rid of the [Imap]/Drafts label two days ago and have not been plagued by any endless "writing changes to disk" activity since then. Great job. Thanks again.

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