System Index Rebuild After Marker Fix | Generated by AI
Here’s the result:
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Load average: 18+ | 7.58 (dropping) |
| mdworker processes: 13 | 0 (gone) |
| mds touching excluded dirs? | No — markers working |
What’s still happening: mds_stores at 94% is rebuilding the main system index from scratch (because we erased it). This is a one-time cost — it’ll finish in ~2 more minutes and settle to near 0%.
Proof the exclusions worked: All 13 mdworker processes died immediately after we set the markers. They were the ones crawling your Projects and Caches folders. Now only mds_stores remains, rebuilding just the system + Applications index.
After today: Every reboot will see a CPU spike of <30 seconds (not 15 minutes), because the heavy folders stay excluded permanently.