External disk spin down

I have a OWC firewire 800 external hard drive. I want to know if there is a way that I can keep it from spinning down so that info can be accessed more readily. After all what's the point of having a high speed external if it has to spin up every time I want to access it?

Go to system preferences / energy saver / sleep and uncheck put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible

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External disk slowing down Spotlight

I have an external (FireWire) disk plugged into my Mac for Time Machine. But every time I do a Spotlight search from the Spotlight menu item (Cmd-Space) there's a delay of around 5 seconds while my external disk spins up.
Is there any way to stop or prevent this?
At the moment I've set up Automator to automatically unmount the disk in the morning & then mount it again in the evening (so I don't have the problem when I'm working on the computer) which stops me from the slow down.
But ideally I'd like to have the disk connected with Time Machine working all the time, but without the slowdown.

the only thing I can recommend is to exclude that drive from Spotlight searches.
There is absolutely no reason to have a TM drive indexed by Spotlight anyway.
To exclude it from Spotlight, add it to the privacy tab in spotlight system preferences.

Internal Hard Disk spin down - Mac locks up

Hi.
Recently my iMac has started to occasionally lock up. The other evening it was quiet and I heard the hard drive spin down. Following this any action results in the beach ball, and eventually everything locks up, because it cannot read from or write to the disk.
I have tried disabling hard drive sleep. Reseting the SMC and PRAM.
Not sure if it is related, but I also noticed that the system profiler reports that the last hardware test was run in 4008 (I'm sure it used to say 2008). So I ran a hardware test, no problems. The last hardware test date is now reported as 28th June 4010. Hmmmm.
Any thoughts on this, or help as to the next step will be very happily received.

It is normal to see the spinning beach ball cursor while the drive spins up, but obviously it should go away once the drive is spun up & the iMac should not eventually lock up.
Also, not every drive honors the spin-down command from the OS -- some spin down automatically according to their own internal timer regardless of the system preference -- but AFAIK no drive Apple ships in any Mac does this.
So just to cover all the possibilities, can you confirm that your iMac has the original internal drive it shipped with, & that there are no external drive(s) attached to it? If you do have any external drives, does the issue persist if they are unattached?
You might want to run Disk Utility's Verify/Repair Disk step on each drive you use to make sure a file system issue is not involved, & the Apple Hardware Test (which will require removing any non-essential peripherals like external drives & thus not test them) to see if a hardware issue is causing this.

External disks spinning up for no apparent reason.

Hi.
As long as I have had this iMac 27" i7 my external disks will at random intervals spin up for no apparent reason.
One is set as a TimeMachine disk, the other is just for storage.
I run iStat Pro, but have uninstalled it to see if it made any difference, all to no avail.
There is no program I know of trying to acsess them.
I have lost a TimeMachine disk before, and are therefore a tad conserned when it comes to life expectancy.
Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.
P.J.Berg

I roll my own. I have two Macally GS350SUAB Hi-Speed eSATA/1394A/1394B/USB2.0 Storage Enclosures for 3.5inch SATA HDD
One with an Hitachi 1TB HD31000 IDK/7K Deskstar SATA 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive
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External Drives Spinning Down

Greetings All;
Although the upgrade to Mountain Lion went without a hitch on all of my machines, since the upgrade my external firewire drives spin down when not in use.
They do spin back up after a few seconds when accessed. This obviously isn't a major issue...just wondering if anyone else has experience this. Any thoughts? All the best....
Syd Rodocker
Apple iTunes U Administrator
Tennessee State Department of Education
Tennessee's Electronic Learning Center

Joe;
Thanks for the response! Glad to hear I'm not the only one. I have multiple FCP editing systems and a couple of iMac's for graphics work, so I've now begun only powering up the drives that I need for the day's current project. Interesting development. All the best...
Syd Rodocker
Apple iTunes U Administrator
Tennessee State Department of Education
Tennessee's Electronic Learning Center

Hard disk spin-down

I have installed a second hard drive (500GB Western Digital SATA SE16) in my Mac Pro quad-core. The drive spins down regardless of the power management settings (system preferences) and does so even when I’m actively working, but not directly accessing the second drive. It then spins up, with a corresponding time lag of 10-20 seconds and the spinning beach ball, when drive access is necessary. I know from the WD website that there is a setting for a jumper on pins 3 & 4 which will prevent spin down (much like would be required for a RAID setup). Does it make sense to enable that jumper to prevent spin down in this case? Will the system power management settings still function properly with the jumper set? Thanks for any input.

Hi Pascal,
"I'd really love to be able to work in silence.. and also save my poor hard disk !"
As you already know, constantly spinning up and down is very bad for a hard disk.
The best would be to have it sleeping all the time, but if this is not possible, better leave it spinning constantly then.
"What is the annoying Panther feature (that Jaguar or OS9 didn't have) that keeps spinning my disk ?"
I'm not sure about that, but I think it has to do with the constant rewriting of files that Mac OS X uses (causing defragmentation as a side-effect, BTW).
My guess is that this didn't happen to your newly installed system, but now happens because there is much more fragmented free space on your hard drive.
Another explanation is if the OS X behaviour mentioned has been enhanced after 10.3.6 or so?
Or this can be also the kind of buggy behaviour described here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1267183#1267183
The default spindown time if you choose "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" in Energy Saver, is 10 minutes of inactivity.
You can use Cocktail or TinkerTool System to modify this 10 minutes delay, or paste this Terminal command:
sudo pmset -a spindown 2
to reduce the required inactivity to 2 minutes
(but again, this is not what you are looking for, as this is worse than leaving it constantly spinning, unless perfect silence is so important to you).
I don't know how to tell Mac OS X to behave like former systems though, and I don't even know if it is possible at all.
Usually someone would like to set a longer spindown delay, like
sudo pmset -a spindown 120
for example.
Good luck!
Axl

Disks spin down (sleep) unbidden

Under Tiger (10.4.6) One or more of my internal hard drives spin down (sleep) when the drive isn't accessed for a short time, even if I'm using the computer, e.g. typing a message.
I have unchecked "put hard disks to sleep" in the Energy Saver and trashed the preferences (Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist) and reset the pram. The problem still happens.
Can anyone help?

This problem is definitely related to Tiger, at least partly. Previously, I was running 10.2, and this didn't happen.
It's not the only change to my drive behavior that appeared when I installed Tiger. At some point when I was running 10.2, I mistakenly moved my third internal hard drive (which is on its own interface card) to the wrong connector on the ribbon cable. The drive still worked, but it would spin down after an hour or so if I didn't access the drive. But the other 2 drives would keep spinning. When I installed Tiger, things changed. It didn't even see that third drive at all, and the other 2 drives would spin down after some short time (like 15 minutes or so) of inactivity. I moved the drive to the correct connector on the ribbon cable, and all of a sudden, Tiger recognized the drive -- but that drive now spins down too after a short time. Again, this is a new behavior under Tiger.
FYI, I migrated from 10.2 to 10.4, so it could have been a change introduced in 10.3.
G4 dual 1GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Attached disk spin down

Anybody figure out how to have the attached USB drives spin down when not in use? I'm guessing it will have to be a new firmware fix... Otherwise, I guess Apple will be OK with buying everybody new disks next year... works for me..

There are multiple threads discussing this issue. One of them is "Any idea whether the AE spins down USB hard drives?"

External drives spin down & up frequently

Firewire Seagate 250 GB HD used to spin down after periods of no access, but now it is always spinning and never sleeps. I didn't do anything -- that I recall -- to make the drive stay "awake".
The current symptom: every few minutes (15? 30? it's difficult to time it) I hear the drive start to spin down, but it doesn't get far before it spins back to full speed. The entire spastic sleep-OH NO DON'T episode takes about 3 seconds.
I checked the Sys Prefs>Energy Saver settings: "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" is checked; "Wake for Ethernet administrator access" is un-checked; and there are no scheduled wake-ups or sleeps.
I did recently upgrade to 10.5.6, but I can't say whether this symptom started before or after the upgrade.
Anyone else have this experience? Why would this have changed? How do I get the drives back again to their sleepy nature?
Thanks,
NP
Mac Intel Mini 1.83 GHz / 2 GB / 230 GB (internal)
OS X 10.5.6

Maybe here,Question on OS X Notebook Hard Drive Load Cycle Rates
No, not directly related to my issue.
Thanks, though.

Disks spinning down unbidden

you folks in this topic are so knowledgeable, maybe you can shed some light on this one. I got no answer for it in other topics, maybe because some underlying Unix thing is related to the problem? Or not. I don't have a clue.
Under Tiger (10.4.6) One or more of my internal hard drives spin down (sleep) when the drive isn't accessed for a short time, even if I'm using the computer, e.g. typing a message or editing a file. This is a new behavior that appeared when I installed Tiger, under 10.2 and 10.1 it didn't happen (I skipped 10.3).
I have unchecked "put hard disks to sleep" in the Energy Saver and trashed the preferences (Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist) and reset the pram. The problem still happens. I don't even have a clue which piece of software is responsible for this.
Can anyone help?

Bill's got a good reply there... but if you don't understand what using sudo does, you might want to do a quick bit of reading (in very VERY short: you are 'God' on that machine)
You should check out pmset -g as well (don't need to run it with sudo ('as root')

Hard Disks Spinning Down

Apologies if this has been answered.
In the Energy Saver preferences, I have unchecked the preference to spin down the hard disks (put them to sleep). But even so, the disks still spin down, which leaves me staring at the beach ball several times a day. I have the other preferences set to sleep both the system and display after 1 hour.
Is there a way in 10.4.6 to keep the disks from spinning down?
QuickSilver Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I have the same problem with a similar, if not identical, computer.
I have unchecked "put hard disks to sleep" in the Energy Saver and trashed the preferences (Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist)
The problem still happens. Can anyone help?

External drives spin down and up on their own??

Suddenly my external drives are acting very strange.
They go to sleep within 3 minutes??
This happens only a few minutes after the last time I access them.
I do not remember this happening prior to SL.
I did a fresh install a second time on a brand new system drive- and I still get this issue with my externals shutting down and having to spin up.
My FW800 take a long time to spin up and I get the beachball.
What is going on?

Perhaps a basic question but is "Sys Pref" - "Energy Saver" - "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep whenever possible" enabled?
Perhaps try Topher's tip in this article (setting no spindown time via Terminal)?
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10346924-263.html
/p

How to make a external HD (FireWire or USB) spin down when no in use?

I have a MM and want to make sure that the external HD spins down if not being used.
Would this automatically happen if I tick the box 'Put HD to sleep when not in use' in the control panel? Or is there an other solution to make sure it does so? I have not bought a disk as of now, but would be looking at a 2.5 (Samsung HM500LI 500 GB (SpinPoint M6)) in a FireWire housing.
Thanks

I really have no idea because I never sleep disks. However, that's controlled by the setting in the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist file. The default is ten minutes if you sleep disks. Experiment with various settings by issuing this command in the Terminal.app, until you get it the way you want it:
*sudo pmset -a disksleep XX*
where XX is the new time in minutes.

External firewire drive constant spin-down/up

I often connect an external Lacie firewire drive to my MacBook Pro for regular time machine backups. When the drive is connected and I'm using my Mac, the drive is constantly spinning and in an 'awake' state.
The drive remains in this state for as long as the display is on. As soon as the display enters sleep mode the external drive spins down, remains in sleep mode for 30 seconds, then spins-up for 20 seconds, only to enter sleep mode again. This cycle continues endlessly causing excessive noise and needless wear and tear.
I've unchecked put hard disk to sleep when possible in the energy saver preferences although this hasn't helped.
Any ideas?

Try un-checking the drive sleep box.
What model is the drive? Is it bus-powered or does it have its own AC power supply brick? What does LaCie have to say?

Prevent external disk from spinning up

I am not sure this is really related to time machine, but here goes.
I have an external firewire disk attached, and it has one partition for time machine.
When time machine starts a backup, it wakes the disk (i.e., spins it up), which is fine.
A while after the backup, the disk spins down again, fine, too.
However, in-between backups, the disk spins up for no apparent reason.
This is a bit annoying, since i'm not using the disk at all (other than for backup), and it makes a bit of a noise, so i would like to keep the waking times of the disk to a minimum.
Any ideas?
Best regards,
Gabriel.
PS:
Yes, I have configured spotlight to exclude that external disk from indexing.
Message was edited by: GabrielZ

Experiencing the same thing here.
It's a repeat of:
Wake-up -> TM Backup -> Stays spinning for 10 minutes -> spins down -> Starts spinning 5
minutes later -> Stays spinning for 10 minutes -> spins down......
TM currently takes backup on :45, then the drive starts spinning up around :00, :15, :30.
I'm worried that the excessive spindown, spinup will wear out the HD.
This did not occur in 10.5.1. Started after upgrading to 10.5.2.
Since the FireWire HD for TM is the only FireWire HD I have, I can't confirm whether this is related to Time Machine or not.
By the way, using USB will prevent spindown, though backup will take a bit longer.

External disk spin down

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