SpotOff allows you to bring mds indexing under control. It can use more conservative methods–such as ejecting and re-mounting Time Machine drives–to the more extreme, which includes completely unloading the mds process and re-loading it at a more convenient time.

The mds process, which is formally named the metadata server, is used primarily by Spotlight and Time Machine to index your drives. For many users, it isn’t problematic, but for others, it can bottleneck the system for hours on end. When mds is indexing, there are considerable performance delays; the system can overheat, causing the fans to come on; and batteries on laptops can drain much faster than normal. The process may, quite literally, consume from 50% to 90% of your processing power when it’s highly active. In many cases, people may believe their system is actually failing. SpotOff can control mds indexing, but the real question is, do you need it? To find out, we offer as a free download the product named Spot-O-Meter. Spot-O-Meter is included in the SpotOff package, but it’s also available as a free download from MacUpdate or from the SpotOff Web page. Simply download Spot-O-Meter from either site, and if the meter is showing a lot of activity at inconvenient times, you may wish to consider purchasing SpotOff. Who suffers from excessive mds activity? If you have a static system, meaning you don’t disconnect or reconnect drives often and your system is running OS X 10.9 Mavericks or later, you may not see it at all, or at least not enough to really be problematic. However, if you use your system in any of the following circumstances, SpotOff may be of valuable to you:

• Your using an older system running an OS between OS X 10.5 Leopard and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
• You frequently create and delete lots of data (gigabytes per day)
• You often boot into another OS version – this can wreak havoc with mds indexing
• You periodically connect external drives to your system that are not in place 90% or more of the time.
• You have lots of files on your system that Spotlight simply has a hard time indexing.

We specialize in troubleshooting and performance software for Macs, and still proudly support even single core PPC systems running OS X 10.5 Leopard, up through the newest Intel based systems through OS X 10.10 Yosemite! Please visit our web site or check out our other products right here on MacUpdate.