[OT] Mac Beach Ball Party (or welcome to hell, here's your mac)

[Kay C Lan]

Actually missed a big one off the list.

Spotlight - which would show up as mdworker in Activity Monitor. If you've
added a 'new' HD, internal or external and haven't set Spotlight to ignore
it then Spotlight may take forever to process it and you will definitely
end up with the beachball.

New in this case would mean something like moving your 1.75TB of backups to
a new 3TB drive. Spotlight will spend forever doing it's thing to the
1.75TB already on the drive.

I always add Backup/Archive HDs to Spotlight's Privacy list - but many
times I forget with upgrades and it isn't until I'm left with an
unresponsive system that I crack open AM and find the culprit.

Also, what Sharing services have you set up. Is it possible someone is
accessing iTunes, iPhoto or large files - you turned it on and forgot to
turn it off? What about iCloud, are you snap happy and is iPhoto constantly
updating your last 1000 photos to iCloud? Again, AM should help you pin
point it.

HTH