It's probably SpotLight indexing the contents of the Time Machine drive . . .you can turn it off in System Preferences by adding the external drive to the Privacy tab. On Aug 7, 2010, at 5:57 PM, James Hurley wrote: > I have just implemented Time Machine on my Mac 10,5,8 > > There is a great deal of activity on the external HD after the hourly back up is completed. > > What is going on? Is it indexing the newly stored files? Can I stop this? > ----------------------------------------------- There are only three kinds of stress; your basic nuclear stress, cooking stress, and A$$hole stress. The key to their relationship is Jello. neil