[petert]

Hello

On sunday, two days ago, I upgraded to Lion on my 18month old iMac i3. There were no obvious problems and everything runs smoothly. However, since then, the harddisk has been constantly working; not thrashing, but constantly working. And it is still going! That's 3 days of at least 12 hours a day of the harddisk seemingly working more or less non-stop. Is this normal? Why might it be happening?

Thankyou
Peter

[JamieD]

Try turning off spotlight indexing for the disk and see if that helps.

[petert]

Of course! I never thought of that. I will give it a try.

Thankyou for taking the time to respond.

[BrianB]

Good thinking Jamie.

Was that the issue???

[petert]

No, I turned-out Spotlight indexing, as suggested, but it made no difference.

So, I went to Activity Monitor and checked the highest CPU cycles. Mostly is was SyncServer and MSSyncServices (or something like that). I force-quit SyncServer and the activity immediately ceased. To checked, I re-booted. Still no problem. I turned-on Spotlight indexing and still no problem.

As far as I can tell, it appears to have been SyncServer. Are you able to tell me anything about the function of that process?



NEW PROBLEM

But that leads me to a new issue. When I re-booted neither SyncServer nor MSSyncService was opened a process. Is that correct or should those by working processes?

Thankyou
Peter

[petert]

More information

I went away from my computer for a while - 10 or 15 minutes. When I returned, I noticed that the hard disk activity had re-started. I checked Activity Monitor and SyncService had re-started. I force-quit that process and the activity again immediately ceased.

I am quite sure that the "issue" is SyncService. Can you please explain what it might be doing and why is needs to be doing if for 4 days (and counting)?

Thankyou
Peter

[Ken Gracey]

Its a problem with Mobile me, for some reason its not quitting the sync part of the operation, I found this on apples web site

Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard and OS X Lion

If you see the Sync menu in the menu bar, skip to step 4:
If you do not see the Sync menu in your menu bar and you are not a MobileMe member, skip to step 8.
If you do not see the Sync menu in your menu bar and you are a MobileMe member, you will need to enable Sync status in System Preferences. Follow these four steps to enable the Sync menu and then proceed with the subsequent troubleshooting steps as necessary:
From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences.
From the View menu, choose MobileMe.
Click the Sync tab.
Select the option "Show Sync status in menu bar."
Hold the Option key on your keyboard, then click the Sync menu in the menu bar:
if you see the Sync menu but you are unable to open it, skip to step 8.
Choose Reset Sync Services.
Click Reset Sync History.
Test for the original issue. If the issue persists, or if you are unable to open the Sync menu, follow these steps:
In the Finder, choose Utilities from the Go menu.
Open Terminal.
In the Terminal window, type or paste the following command on a single line:
/System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl full

Press Return.
When the operation is complete, quit Terminal.

[petert]

Thankyou Ken.

I had a gut feeling that it had something to do with Mobile Me. I will try that solution.

Regards
Peter

[petert]

Hello Ken

I tried the solution that you found. For the past couple of minutes, it seems to be working. Fingers crossed X

Thankyou again.

Regards
Peter