28

I first noticed that fsck_hfs was running, taking up 50-75% of a CPU, yesterday. It continues to run today.

Running ps -ax shows that it is doing /sbin/fsck_hfs -f -n -x -E /dev/disk3. Only problem: I don’t think I have a /dev/disk3.

  1. Why is it running?
  2. Will it ever finish?
  • Can I kill it?
  1. What is /dev/disk3? Could it be my Time Machine volume, which is not mounted at the moment?

System Info: MacBook Pro (2008). It has two disks installed—the internal disk (/dev/disk1) and a PC Card SSD (/dev/disk0, surprisingly). It connects to a remote Time Machine volume attached to an Airport Extreme base station.

Ian Dunn
  • 322
Nate
  • 4,143

4 Answers4

27

Clicking on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and choose "Skip verification" caused the fsck_hfs process to stop itself. Maybe a bit nicer than kill...

dubek
  • 691
21
  1. It was probably running from when your Time Machine volume was mounted.
  2. If the volume isn't present anymore, I doubt it.
    • I'm sure you can sudo killall fsck_hfs; it wouldn't hurt anything. (Have you tried restarting?)
  3. It probably is.
squircle
  • 6,773
3

I would recommend against killing it.

Last time I did, it left my Time Machine backup in a state where OSX believed it to be corrupted. This resulted in OSX refusing to continue using this backup, i.e. OSX queried me to create a new backup (which would effectively mean I would loose any history in my backup, e.g. deleted files, previous versions of modified files, etc.)

I managed to bring the Time Machine backup into a good state, allowing OSX to continue using this backup, but it was quite a hassle.

Pete
  • 500
3

You can also click on the Time Machine icon, select "Open Time Machine Preferences...", and you should see a progress bar for how far along the "Backing Up" process is.

You can then click the "x" next to the progress bar to stop the verification process.

svec
  • 690