Adjusting Hard Disk Sleep?

Is there a way to adjust the default time when I've enabled "put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible"? The default time seems very short to me, and would love to extend it to a half hour or so before they go to sleep.
Thanks!

yes, it's possible. install TextWrangler and open the file /library/preferences/systemconfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist in textWrangler. change the entry for Disk Sleep Timer from 10 to 30 and save. you'll have to provide your admin password. then restart and the disk sleep timer will be set to 30 minutes. you can adjust that number to whatever you want of course.

Similar Messages

Safe to turn off hard disk sleep?

i have a powermac g4 with mirror drive doors. i've been having occasional trouble waking from sleep. i turned off sleep mode for the computer, and unchecked "put the hard disk to sleep when possible". is this safe for my computer, or will it harm the hard disk?

If I had a nickel for every "sleep" related question I wouldn't have to work for a living.
Your hard drives are, as David says, fully capable of running all the time. Some swear that it is better for the drives. My belief is that this comes from the experience of older hard drives which were best left on all the time. Newer drives are designed to power down as required by the EnergyStar mandates. So they can run or sleep and it really shouldn't matter.
What does matter is the not waking from sleep. If by that you mean you had to use the power button to shut down completely and then restart your computer acutally crashed. If/when this happens you should do one of the following upon or before attempting to restart
1) Boot single user and run fsck
2) Boot from the install disk and run Disk Utility from the cd/dvd
3) Hold down the shift key for a Safe Boot which also runs fsck before booting fully
The chances are that the directory was ok when the computer entered sleep and the journal of the hard drived was up to date. But if not then repeated hard reboots will accumulate directory errors which will mess things up.

MacBook Pro Retina and Hard Disk Sleep

I have noticed in the Energy Saver in the System Preferences section, that their is a Put Hard Disk to sleep when possible, but I know that my laptop is an SSD and not a hard drive. Is this something I should uncheck or leave checked?
Thanks!

You can leave it as it is now. That option also applies to the SSD, although you see hard disks

External Hard Disks Sleep after 10.8.5 update

After installing the latest Apple update to Mtn Lion, my external disks sleep and cannot be awakened via remote access. Nothing changed except the update.
It happened at work as well as on my home network.

I am on a Mac Pro 2.8 (3.1) 2008 model. 12 Gb ram and a radeon 5870. This supplemental update has been pretty horrible. I have had the following issues: messed up sleep, random wake ups, and one hard crash. I have also had the long sleep delay where the fans crank up and it takes forever to sleep...only a restart cures this, which is pretty useless. The mach file showing but that was fixed with a terminal command. Lost video chat icon on iMessage for a while but that has now mysteriously returned. The last annoying bug I have suffered with is what seems like horribly reduced audio quality out of the Apple LED 24 inch cinema display speakers. It sounds like 22kz mono both input and output.
I would rate this update a full on zero out of ten, for creating problems that never existed in 10.8.5.

Hard drive disconnects itself improperly-Hard disk sleep?

Hello,
I have recently bought a 2011 Macbook Pro and I am facing a problem with an external Verbatim LCD hard drive.
It seems like when the drive is inactive for 10 minutes or so, it gets disconnected improperly, I get an error message and the drive disappears from the system until I unplug it and plug it back in.
Also I have noticed that when the disk is in use , it does not disconnect. I tried leaving playing a movie to see what will happen and everything was ok. When I stopped the movie and left the Macbook Pro it disconnected itself after a while.
I know this may be bacause of the option in the Power Saver "Put hard disks to sleep if possible".
So, I have decided to untick this option and up to now everything seems fine again.
I just wonder, should I leave this option on or off? And if this option is there, why does it cause such a serious problem like disconnecting a hard drive?
This certainly should not be happening!
I would appreciate any information on that.
Thank you in advance!

Anyone?

Hard Disk Sleep Issue

Does anyone else notice their Hard Disks trying to sleep even though the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" box is unchecked in the Energy Saver preference pane? I keep hearing drives inside my Mac Pro spooling down, then normally spooling up again 30 seconds later. I've tried restoring the prefs to default and an SMC reset with no luck. Thanks..

Hi Mate ! I am experiencing the same problem with my MacPro - did search a lot of discussions - but didn´t get any helpful answer. I switched off all sleep/energy saver modes. Did all system resets, even all onyx scripts - nothing helped. From time to time - specially when working with the Mac Pro Apps - the second internal diskdrive falls to sleep and needs about 20 to 30 sec. to reactivate. I can switch between programs at that time, but all I see is the rainbow wheel. Does anyone know a workaround for that ? It would be very much appreciated

Hard Disk Sleep Delay Time

Is there a tweak out there somewhere where I can set the amount of time before my external disks go to sleep? The 5 minute delay is way too short and it's driving me crazy when I use the Finder.

Hi, B.
See my "Spinning Beach Ball Of Death (SBBOD)" FAQ, specifically the section entitled "SBBOD spins for 30-35 seconds. You may hear your hard drives spinning up." Depending on the firmware of your external drives' enclosures, there may be no way to change how it responds to Energy Saver preferences.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Anybody know a setting that wil allow Airport hard disk sleep???

The hard drive connected via USB to my Airport N base never spins down. Any tips?
- thanks for any help.
Ted.

Hi Lethal (I hope you don't own a gun)
thanks for your response. I just had a brain storm after reading your answer! I think I'll use a small 2.5 form drive enclosure to save on the electric bill.
Hitachi, by the way, has those 2.5 drives with 16 meg cache at 7200 rpm. They are awesome. Better to put one in your Macbook though, of course. Lighting quick, these drives are!

10.8.5 on MacPro5,1 - disabling "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" doesn't work any more

I have always had "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" disabled in the Energy Saver section of System Preferences, but since upgrading to 10.8.5 this setting is no longer obeyed... I can distinctly hear the sound of my hard drives winding down and winding back up *very* often, and toggling the setting has no effect...
There's other threads about hard disk sleep issues with 10.8.5 and it seems this is another one to add to the list... Definitely needs to be addressed because my hard drives are powering up & down quite a lot even when the system is sitting idle, which is gonna create a lot of unnecessary mechanical wear on those drives...

Unfortunately, this is a known bug that Apple is working on.
I submitted feedback regarding this issue and surprisingly received a couple of phone calls from Apple support about this issue. I ran through several questions with the tech and advised him that I temporarily resolved the issue by restoring from a saved 10.8.4 installation. So, for the moment, everything is working as it should. The Apple tech asked if I would be willing to re-install 10.8.5 and provide some logs, but I declined since everything is back to normal now.
As a side note, it has been said on other forums, the issue can be temporarily "fixed" by setting your monitor to never go to sleep and stay on, which ironically causes your hard disks to "never" sleep either. I also provided this bit of info to the Apple tech in hopes of resolving this.

Transporting MBP: Sleep, Hibernation and dangers to hard disk

I used to transport my MBP by closing the lid and putting it in my backpack. Recently, however, it started to overheat when I do that. At first I thought it was some bug, maybe it hadn't gone to sleep properly. But then it happened again. I started to manually putting it to sleep before closing the lid, but no luck. It happened again. It happened 3 or 4 times in about 2 months and then the computer stopped working properly and I had to take it to professionals. They said I should NEVER put it in my backpack in sleep mode. Maybe if it's a 5min trip only, but not otherwise. They said the hard disk is not completely shut off in this mode and so carrying it around in movement may damage it. They checked my computer and said that indeed it was a hard disk problem, and that now that it was changed it's working fine. They said I should always shut it down before transporting it, which is a pain. (I live in Rio and it's above 30ºC most of the year, maybe that contributes to these heating problems, don't know…)
What annoys me is that I haven't found any official statement about it by Apple. I know people who never turn it off and even I did it without any problem for years with my previous MBP (well, in fact it died one day out of the blue and I have no clue why). Actually I can only assume based on discussions that the computer actually goes to sleep mode when I shut the lid, and I can only speculate about what this actually means because I haven't found any official information regarding it. I found that there's a mode called "hibernationmode 25" which is supposed to be essencially the same as shutting down the computer and saving the current RAM data to the hard disk. But I haven't found any official statement confirming this. I don't know if it really is as safe to carry it shut down as in this mode. Does anybody know where I can find official information about this? Or if there's any reliable way to contact Apple itself and actually get a reply?
Thanks!

The Expert, Professional, you spoke to has NO clue. When any computer is put to Sleep, irrespective of what OS is installed (OS X or Windows) and what version of that OS, the only part that is supposed to be kept alive is the RAM and even that will go to sleep and dump it's contents onto the hard drive after an extended period of time if the system also has the hibernation mode set to do so. It then goes into a Deep Sleep state basically turning off completely.
I suspect what you are seeing it the system is trying to go from standard sleep mode to the Deep Sleep Hibernate mode and when that happens it must partially wake up to write the RAM data to the hard drive. At that point your system is not going back into either sleep mode or the Deep Sleep mode and that is when it heats up.
There are also many reports of Mac's of all ages crashing when trying to wake up from sleep and most of the time this is after it has gone into the Deep Sleep state and when you try to wake it the system doesn't or can't put back into the RAM the data that was written to the hard drive causing the system to hang and force a hard shutdown and restart.
I personally solve that problem by turning off the Hibernate system and deleting the Sleep Image file that is used to store the RAM data. So my MBP never going into that Deep Sleep state and I have never had a problem waking it whether after a few minutes or a day or so of being asleep. And it has never woken up on its own in my computer bag.
But to answer your question, statement from that Professional, the hard drive turns off completely when the system is put to sleep.

How to prevent hard disks from sleeping

Hello
I have recently installed a SSD for system drive in my machine, and now realise what a bottle neck the old, standard hard disk had been. Booting is now extremely fast, as is opening applications. This speed has alerted me to another problem. My hard disks keep falling asleep, which slows down operantion of the machine significantly. For instance, to log into this forum, I used 1Password. When selecting the log in menu item from 1Password, there was several seconds delay before one of the hard disk (I have four inside the machine, one external Drobo, and one external eSata drive) came alive. When it had, Safari could take me into the site. There constant delays like this when I use Safari, for example. These delays are very frustrating, so I want to keep all my disks awake constantly.
Thing tried so far:
The worst problem was the Drobo, because it has three disks inside that wake up one after the other, a very slow process, and the Drobo is slow in itself. So I installed a little script that does a touch command every five minutes, to prevent the Drobo from sleeping. It seems this has helped. But the other disks keep falling asleep all the time. I have set Cocktail to prevent all disks from sleeping - no effect. The Energy Computer Sleep setting is set to Never.
Any ideas will be much appreciated. This sleep issue keeps bugging my all day long.

In the Energy Saver system pref, are any of the boxes checked?
If it were me, I guess I'd try clicking the 'restore defaults' button in Energy Saver, restart the computer, and then go back into the Energy Saver and set the computer sleep to either 3 hours or never, and uncheck the 'put hard disks to sleep when possible' box. You might try 3 hours instead of never and see if that makes a difference.

Mac pro parking hard disks when not in sleep mode

I have noticed over the last 3 months or so HD's (2,3, and 4 ) are spinning down when I'm away from machine- even when I'm running logic 9 or other apps then spinning up as soon as I click on icons,apps etc .The computer is not asleep when this happens and the computer does sleep as expected under normal conditions.My energy settings are as normal -Screen sleep in 15 and computer sleep 1hr.
Does any one have any thoughts I have recently done SMC- no difference and have updated to 10.6.8
any thoughts would be appreciated
Thanks

Thanks
"My energy settings are as normal -Screen sleep in 15 and computer sleep 1hr."Option put the hard disk to sleep when possible is un-checked.Gonna try p-ram

IMac won't sleep or sleep hard disks either!

My iMac is late 2009 and am running Mountain Lion 10.8.2. I used to be able to click sleep under Apple menu>Sleep or by simply pressing the sleep button at the back of the iMac to ensure it goes to sleep including the hard disks. However, for the past 3 days the screen will just go black but not sleep, as if I'm pressing a command to turn the screen off only.
I checked to make sure bluetooth devices do not wake up iMac.
I checked energy saver to make sure that 'Put hard disks to sleep when possible' is checked
I checked that network interuptions will not cause iMac to wake from sleep
I checked to make sure downloads or programs are not running in the backround to prevent the iMac from sleeping.
I checked to make sure that USB devices are unplugged and even ethernet cable.
I checked other forums and common answers to this problem would be the above I listed which I made sure is not my problem.
Please help my iMac's insomnia!

Try resetting your SMC
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord.
Wait fifteen seconds.
Attach the computer's power cord.
Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on the computer.

Airport Extreme - is there a way to sleep the USB hard disk?

I have a Lacie Bigger Disk 1.2TB drive connected to the USB port on my Airport Extreme for Time Machine backups. It works great to back up my MacPro, MacBook Pro and my daughter's MacBook.
I was wondering if there was a way to sleep the hard disk when during the night hours when all our computers are off?
I use a ReadyNAS NV+ connected to my gigabit network and it has settings to allow me to have the unit turn itself off and on at times I select. This would be a great feature for the APE to save power.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Bud James

Hi Bud,
Just a quick question; how did you get Airport Extreme to work with Time Machine?
Thanks.
Best regards,
Rob

External hard disk disconnected after recovery from prolonged sleep mode

helloI am new on this forum and hope I will not make any mistakes.On my Probook 4740s, if I go into the prolonged sleep mode, when I come out, my external hard disk (verbatim USB3 1To with 2 partitions) is disconnected and I must restart the PC.This does not happen if I go into the normal sleep mode.Thanks for your help

Hi @Karlo12333 ,
Welcome to the HP Forums!
It is a great place to find answers and information!
For you to have the best experience in the HP forum I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide Learn How to Post and More
Unfortunately coping the partition does not work. I don't thing you will be able to create recovery media from the copied partition on the external but if you have not yet created recovery disk you can give it a try.
If you cannot create the recovery media you will need to contact HP support to obtain a recovery kit.
Please call our technical support at 800 474 6836. If you live outside the US/Canada Region, please click the link below to get a support number for your region.
World Wide Phone Support
Good Luck!
Sparkles1
I work on behalf of HP
Please click “Accept as Solution ” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
Click the “Kudos, Thumbs Up" on the bottom right to say “Thanks” for helping!

Adjusting Hard Disk Sleep?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for