EtreCheckPro, How is this possible?

Metadata system. Anything mds is part of Spotlight indexing the files on your Mac.

Generally, when it gets high like that it is something confusing the indexing process.

More than 100% is possible because each core in your CPU has a potential of 100%. You are using a little over two cores to index Spotlight database.

MargeHomer wrote:

I ran EtreCheckPro again this morning and "mds_stores" didn't even make the list. What made me think there may be a possible issue was the "Any value over 100% may indicate a serious problem" statement below the listing.

The key phrase there is "may indicate". It is something you should keep an eye on. Normally, your disk doesn't have to be completely reindexed. That's what it sounds like was happening here. Why that happened is a mystery. If it continues to happen on a regular basis, then that would be a problem.

It might help if you had posted your entire EtreCheck report. If you had recently upgraded your operating system, then that might explain it. You should never, never post those kinds of screenshots from EtreCheck. They could show private information and the Apple moderators will delete your post. EtreCheck includes a text report specifically designed to be posted here in the forums. It will show this CPU usage along with lots of other information, some of which might explain why it was happening.

You have an awful lot of apps that run 24x7 doing various types of full-disk data processing. Those are likely interfering with the operating system's own full-disk data processing.

Just go through your EtreCheck report and review each item. Identify what it is doing and how. Since you are having a problem and it is reproducible, it should be easy to disable or uninstall those 3rd party system modifications and eventually see the mds usage go back to normal. However, it is doing full-disk processing, so it may take a while to settle down.

"may" being the operative word. 😎