Delay on save as external hard drive spins up

I have an issue with Snow Leopard that seems new.
Often when I go to save a document there is a significant delay while the external hard drive spins up. This happens also sometimes when I go to open a file from within an application.
I have spotlight set to not index that drive. How can I stop my computer from thinking that something I may want to save to the external hard drive? I would like to ignore it all together except for when I use Time Machine.

You can try the energy saver settings, telling OS X to not spin down drives. However, for external drives, often they do their own thing.
There's no way to do what you want, unfortunately. The standard file dialog will probe all attached drives, so when you try to save, and the drive is spun down, it will wake and respond. As you've noted, this can take a few seconds.

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External Hard Drive Spins Every Time Finder Window Opens

I've noticed one major problem since installing SL. Every time I open a finder window or get a "Save as.." dialogue box or something like that, all connected external hard drives have to boot up and start spinning. This makes what is supposed to be a faster OS experience much much slower and frequently causes Firefox to crash. In fact I have to reboot several times a day because firefox crashes and then wont allow me to open it again.
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As another SL user who's frustrated with this issue, this seems to be the only fix. However, doesn't unchecking this box in prefs mean that the external drive will never sleep? I've spoken with Lacie support, and they confirmed that this would reduce disc life.

Mac Finder Thumbnail Update Using Save-As External Hard Drive

Hello:
I recently converted to an iMac and CS6 from PC/CS5. In addition to the Mac OS missing some key file selection tools (like shift select for a range of files), I am having a big problem with thumbnail. I recently sent a file to be printed that was edited in CS6 on the iMac. The files were stored on an external hard drive connected direclty to the iMac. The file I got from the printer did not match the image I sent. I traced the problem to the fact that when using the Save-as function, the thumbnail was not updated.
I was able to replicate this problem at will. As an experiment, I moved the file onto the internal hard drive and tried again. This time the thumbnail did update. Has anybody else had this problem? Is this a Mac OS issue, or a Photoshop issue?
Jamie

The problem with the thumbnails comes about when I have a jpeg, make changes to the jpeg, then save-as a file name that is already in the folder. For example, imagine you have a file called myfavorite.jpg and it is a picture of a flower. Later you find a jpeg of a bull dozer and try to save it to that same file as myfavorite.jpg. The OS asks you if you want to write over the existing file, and you say yes. when you go to that file in Finder, or try to open a file in bridge/cs6 which appears to also use finder, the thubmnail is still a picture of a flower. If you do a Quickview of the file the bull dozer pops up. Again, this is only when working on an external hard drive. I am starting to consider that maybe it is the format of the hard drive (FAT32).
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Why is my play head red and my video lagging? How do I save to external hard drive?

I know that this typically happens when there isn't enough space on the hard drive or the memory is low, but neither of those fits my MacBook's condition.
Also, how do I get everything I do in Final Cut Pro X to save onto an external hard drive rather than my internal hard drive?

In the top left of the screen in the Event Monitor you will see all your hard drives listed.
Select the one you want to use and create a New Event.
The Event will then be on that HD.
Whenever you import video you are given the choice of using that default Event or choosing another HD if you have changed your mind.

Working on word document and being able to save to external hard drive

working on word document and being able to save to external hard drive

Within Word, you have to point to the external drive using the "Save..." or "Save as..." dialog box. In this example, the drive named "ALLAN" in the sidebar is a USB thumb drive, so you'd choose it before proceeding:
If you originally saved the document to the hard drive, and then need to move it to an external without leaving Word, use the "Save As..." commend and you will be able to change the locations. Simply using the "Save" command always does a quick write to the original location without allowing you to select another destination. Word's "Save as..." function is the tool of choice.

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What you did when you dragged the entire CD to the hard drive is you dragged a drive onto a drive and you cannot do that. What OS X did is it added an alias of the CD to the HD. An alias in Mac lingo is the same as a shortcut in the world of windoze.
Instead, click open your CD and select all of its contents and drag that to the HD. Better yet, create an empty folder on your HD and drag the CD's contents to that folder. You can Select All from the menubar under Edit or press cmd-A and it will select everything in the active open window.

Can anyone save my external hard drive?

Hi all,
This is probably the first time ever that I have to ask a question myself. Usually when I have any problems I can find a solution in other people's solved threads. But not this time and I'm really frustrated. If any of you can help me with this I will be eternally grateful.
I have a 1TB WD external hard drive with 500Gb of millions of files, really important data that is not copied anywhere else right now.
Around the time I upgraded to Maverick's I think (not 100% sure) I started having problems when I wanted to copy files from the HDD. Some files would randomly give the error "The operation can’t be completed because the item X is in use". Some not, but since I have millions of files, I would try to copy folders, and whenever one of these files gave an error, the whole operation would be canceled and all the copied files deleted. Copying one by one is not an option, especially because there are some that don't even work individually, maybe 1/3 of them, I don't know.
I started looking on the internet about the problem and I found many people having the same one. However, they circumstances were usually different, not wanting to copy from an external HDD, but maybe they just wanted to delete some file or talking about some network thing saying some terms that I don't understand like NAS, SMB shares, AFP, so I thought that that wasn't my case. For the ones whose circumstances were similar, I tried every single option that I found. Here is what I tried so far:
-Copying not the files but the "mother/s folder/s (in many different ways and it definitely didn't solve anything).
-Killing some process called "Unmount blabla" I don't remember.
-Disabling the icon preview in finder. I thought it would solve it because everyone said it did, but not for me : (
Note that so far, while I couldn't copy the files, the speed at which it tried or it copied some was a normal one.
Then I went to disk utility and tried to repair the disk, thinking something was wrong with it. The first time I could verify, but not repair. It didn't solve anything obviously. The second time I couldn't even verify it.
Then I decided to upgrade to Yosemite thinking this might solve a possible Maverick's problem.
My God, it didn't. Now, not only it keeps saying that the files are in use. Now every time I plug the HDD, it takes around 15 minutes without recognising it, until finally a message pops up "This disk can't be repaired. You can still copy files from it, but backup as many as you can and then erase the volume". (It seems it automatically tries to repair it now?)
As if that wasn't enough, once the device is recognised. It seems that the speed at which it reads the files inside has been dramatically decreased. If I try now to copy some files. Like an iPhoto Library of 4 Gb, it copies at approximately 0,05 Mb per second, with an estimated time of 24 hours for 4 mere Gb. It would take a whole year to transfer 500Gb. But of course, not even that since after waiting one hour, it gives the same problem "file in use".
It seems to be more the reading than the writing since when I copy big files that are not in populated folders (and that are not the "evil / in use" files) it does it faster.
Erasing is not an option, there are just too many important things. I know, I should have had 2 copies, but this is the situation now...
I tried downloading a recovery software and I tried with some Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery or something like that. The first times I tried recovering files from it, it would do it at the same ultra slow speed. One of the times, randomly it copied all the files at a normal USB 3.0 speed (I had forgotten how fast that was), but all the files were completely unreadable. When I tried to open them it said they were damaged.
However, it's not that the files are damaged because when I try to copy them manually they can be opened normally. But of course, at the slowest speed in the world and only a fraction of them.
If you can help me solve this issue, I really would be in debt forever. I haven't end up in a dead end like now and I really need to recover the data.
Thank you so much in advance.
Jose

The device may be formatted for Windows, as NTFS. The format is readable, but not natively writable on a Mac. To write to the device, you must either reformat it (erasing all the contents) or install third-party software to enable write access to NTFS.

Time machine, finder save to external hard drive problems

I have a new 2.26 GHz mini and I wanted to get bootcamp going and install windows xp. The instructions suggested to backup the hard drive and I thought this is a great time to try the time machine. I plugged in a external hard drive, opened time machine (Time machine said it needed 29 GB for full backup and the drive had 32 GB free), selected the drive, and let the "backup count down(I think it was a minute and a half)" run down to zero. Time machine started backing up the my main drive to the external drive no problem. It was running good (100MB in 5-10 seconds) for a little while when I noticed that it had reached 2.3 GB and was not going any higher. I let it stay like that for about 5 minutes thinking that maybe it would start going again. No luck. I shut down time machine and saw a finder window with the progress bar behind it saying 2.3 GB. I push the stop button and it said stopping, but it would not stop and disappear like it should. I relaunch the finder and the icons on the desktop disappeared and would not come back. I relaunched repeatedly but they would not come back. Since the bar at the top of the screen would not come back I had to hold in the power button to shut down the computer.
Upon restart everything seemed to work fine until I tried time machine again and it would not work. So I tried to manually backup the files to the external drive. When I copied some files the little finder window popped up and said, zero KB of 290 MB, and would not change. I left it running while opened a browser and did a search for an answer to my problems. After about a half an hour I went back and saw that some files had been transferred. When I looked in the Activity monitor, I saw it was saving the files very slowly. I went to the finder progress bar and when I hit the stop button, it would say stopping but it wouldn't. I would have to relaunch the finder to make it stop. Then I tried to copy the files to a shared drive on my network and the same thing happens.
Before using the time machine both these drives worked no problems. I went to the shared drive computer and used that machine to copy the files from the mini. All files transferred no problems. So now I'm trying to find out what is wrong with my mini. It seems that it has to do with the finder since it effects both the usb and ethernet hard drives. All other functions work as they should. I don't know if anyone has had this problem after using time machine but any help would be appreciated.
Also I tried deleting my com.apple.finder.plist and relaunch the finder. No change.
Scott

Batlo wrote:
(Time machine said it needed 29 GB for full backup and the drive had 32 GB free)
That's much too small for your backups. Time Machine usually needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up (see #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum).
I noticed that it had reached 2.3 GB and was not going any higher. I let it stay like that for about 5 minutes thinking that maybe it would start going again. No luck. I shut down time machine and saw a finder window with the progress bar behind it saying 2.3 GB.
That sounds like the drive is not formatted properly. See #C1 in the Start with the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
The other problems may have the same cause.
Most likely, it's set up for Windoze and not suitable for Time Machine. With only 32 GB free, you must have other data on the drive, so you probably can't erase it and reformat it for Time Machine.
Report back with your findings for the *Partition Map Scheme* and Format of the drive (per #C1), and we can figure out what to do next.

External hard drives spinning up incessantly

I have 4 external drives with about 12 volumes on them and it's literally spinning up a drive every 5 minutes, 24x7 when I am not even using the computer. Nothing weird is running, and it's clear the application is exactly Finder. (and rarely, fseventsd). Here is the output of
sudo fs_usage -f filesys | grep Volumes
01:00:55 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000012   Finder
01:00:55 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000024   Finder
01:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000013   Finder
01:13:04 getattrlist
/Volumes/Giant
0.000014   Finder
01:13:15 getattrlist
/Volumes/Giant
0.000013   Finder
01:17:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000012   Finder
01:17:30 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000013   Finder
01:32:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000016   Finder
01:32:30 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000011   Finder
01:47:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000072   Finder
01:47:30 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000014   Finder
01:54:37 getattrlist
/Volumes/6snow
0.000012   Finder
01:54:49 getattrlist
/Volumes/6snow
0.000014   Finder
01:56:56 getattrlist
/Volumes/4tiger
0.000012   Finder
01:56:57 getattrlist
/Volumes/4tiger
0.000023   Finder
01:57:14 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000014   Finder
01:57:23 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000013   Finder
01:57:49 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000016   Finder
01:57:50 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000024   Finder
01:58:32 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000012   Finder
01:58:32 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000021   Finder
01:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000009   Finder
01:59:18 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000008   Finder
02:00:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000014   Finder
02:00:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000015   Finder
02:00:55 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000019   Finder
02:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000015   Finder
02:10:01 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000022   Finder
02:10:01 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000010   Finder
02:10:01 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000009   Finder
02:10:01 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000013   Finder
02:10:07 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000010   Finder
02:10:11 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000023   Finder
02:10:11 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000025   Finder
02:10:11 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000012   Finder
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Giant
0.000015   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000010   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/U3 System
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000011   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/4tiger
0.000010   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/6snow
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000008   Preview
Note the 02:10:12 "all drives spin up" event. That was opening a PDF in Preview. The PDF was in my home directory/Downloads on "Macintosh HD". The rest is entirely Finder; I was doing nothing at all.
I'm hearing a spool-up literally every 4-5 minutes.
I have essentially given up, and dismounted all the drives until I have need for something on one of them. Of course that kills Time Machine.
Since there is no rime or reason for these accesses, I am NOT impressed with the argument that "drives should spin 24x7, it's better for them". This is a home system, not a server. I know how often I actually need data off these drives - several times a day and many days not at all. So I should use a program to force them to spin 24x7 (by doing more unnecessary accesses)? That's like leaving a hot water faucet open 24x7 to deal with a glitch in an on-demand water heater.
I want the drives to spin down. And stay spun down. And then, when I choose to access something on one of the drives, or an application has something it's going to actually use the drive for (e.g. midnight backups) -- I want it to spin up. Simple enough?
I am running 10.5 but my searches tell me Snow Leopard is worse, and Lion is worse yet.

Good point, just checked, and the answer is no. I had 3 Finder windows open, all viewing the main hard drive.
They did, of course, have the hard drive icons along the left edge.
Edit (from here):
But I wasn't doing anything with Finder during these times.
This activity occurred when I was not using the computer at all.
04:00:41 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000009   ScreenSaverE
04:00:41 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000022   ScreenSaverE
04:02:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000015   Finder
04:02:22 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000019   Finder
04:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000011   Finder
04:59:18 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000005   Finder
05:02:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000013   Finder
05:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000016   Finder
05:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000014   Finder
06:02:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000013   Finder
06:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000021   Finder
06:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000006   Finder
06:59:18 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000006   Finder

External hard drive spinning down (and up) on it's own

I thought my 5 month old external 1tb dual drive was dying at first, but now am seeing a pattern. There is a forum over at macrumors about this. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=445690
I always make sure in my energy settings i have spin down external drives unchecked, because it's known that spin downs and ups can cause drives to fail sooner. Yet I now find my external drive spinning down whenever it's not in use while I'm sitting at my computer, and i hear it spin up at the most random times, even when i'm not using my computer. sometimes in the middle of the night. This did not happen in tiger.
It's connected by firewire 800. At first I thought it was time machine but others in the macrumors forum claim it isn't that. I almost think its network activity. I'm considering using an applescript to access the drive every 5 or ten minutes automatically yet not do anything just to see if this stops it from spinning it down. I do consider this an annoyance and would hope apple will figure out what it is very soon, before it causes any detriment to the life of my expensive drive.

did you ever find a fix for this?
my ext FW800 drives constantly spin down, then when i do something later i get the beachball until they spin back up

Packard Bell store & save 3500 external hard drive

How do I get this hard drive to work on my Mac Book Pro

Is it USB? If so, plug it in, open up the Disk Utility in your Utilities folder (found in your applications folder), erase and format for your Mac for Mac OS Extended Journaled and when it is done formatting you should be good to go.
Is that what you are looking for?

Can't save to external hard drive connected to Airport Ex from networked pc

Hi,
I have always been able to access the files on my external harddrive that's connected to my Airport Extreme from my wirelessly networked laptop pc and make changes, deletions, save files, etc.
Sometime in the past couple of weeks, it changed. I still can get to my files on the ext drive and open them, but I cannot save a file that I edited. For example, if I'm on my pc laptop and I'm in Photoshop, I can still get to the files on the external drive that's connected to my Airport Extreme, but once I make my changes to the graphic and hit save, I cannot save the file to the external drive. As a matter of fact, I've now discovered that I can open files, but not save them, change the file name, etc. on the external drive. I have always been able to. My connections, hardware, etc have not changed.
When I connect to the external drive from my laptop pc, I connect with my mac user name and password. I am an administrator. Thoughts?

Hello,
Try running Disk Utility and Repairing Disk Permissions...
Launch Disk Utility. (Applications/Utilities) Select MacintoshHD in the panel on the left, select FirstAid, then click: Repair Disk Permissions. Quit DU when it's finished and reboot.
Carolyn

Quick save to external hard drive ?

Canon Vixia HF200 SDHC card. Is there an easy way to transfer the entire contents
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You can drag and drop. As I said just make a new folder and drag the card's contents into the folder. Some people like to use disk images because it replicates the card and behaves like a card, but there is really no difference in the end product and the way you work with it in the application.

Delay on save as external hard drive spins up

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