External hard drive wake up too often

Hello,
I have an external hard drive connected through USB 3 to an iMac 27" and it wakes up very often, even when it's not used in any work, or when nobody uses the machine. What can be the cause of this behaviour ? "Suspend as soon as possible hard drive activity" is not checked in the preferences.
Thank you

Using a time capsule will probably be less hassle but it is way more expensive. 1 TB time capsule is around 500 USD, and a external hard drive with same amount is less than 200 USD. So it is certainly cheaper than time capsule. I am still not sure if Time Machine supports backing up on external hard drive hooked up with Wireless Router. But i think i have heard about, Hooking up a portable hard drive to the Airport extreme.
any suggestion? anyone?

Similar Messages

IMac freezes for a few seconds after external hard drive wakes up

24-inch iMac, early 2008. 4GB RAM.
I hear my external hard drive spin up as if it's been not spinning (totally possible; I only use it for Time Machine backups and iMovie archive storage)
During this spin-up process, my iMac (Mountain Lion, latest version) freezes momentarily--keyboard, mouse, screen--but audio remains faithful and music keeps playing.
After about 5 seconds of this delay, the thing catches up with itself and everything I was doing during the freeze gets processed and displayed. (e.g., I may have been typing a sentence and didn't hear the disk spin up at first; once the disk "comes back to life" everything I typed appears on screen as if everything was being typed really quickly--as if my keystrokes were just delayed while the disk spun up.)
Anyone know what's going on or have a solution to this annoying problem?
I'm comfy with the Terminal if any uber geeks want to take a crack at it.
Thanks!

go to apple logo > system preferences > spotlight
then
there are two tabs
choose "Privacy"
drag the external into the spolight privacy section
OR
hit the "+" at the bottom left > navagate to the external > and choose it
whats happening is that spotlight indexes when you turn it on and potentially slows the computer down
also
if it is a Time Machine backup it is pointless as Time Machine mirror images your internal drive to the external
meaning
spotlight has two of the extact same files and folders it has to organize
aka
pointless
let me know how it goes

Macbook telling me that my external hard drive with a usb is pulling too much power and has been dialed what do I do

I have been using my Seagate Free Agent 500g external hard drive for years without even a hint of a glitch but this morning I trying plugging in the usb and got an error message that stated that the hard drive was pulling too much power and was being diabled. So now I cannot get the hard drive to connect period. What do I do - could it be a power cord issue?

Hi cactus flower,
If you are getting a message that a USB device such as your external hard drive is drawing too much power, there are a number of things you can do. I would suggest the steps in this article -
Apple Computers and Displays: Powering peripherals through USB
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4049
Specifically this section -
Troubleshooting
If you have a peripheral (such as a hard drive, audio device, or camera) that is acting unexpectedly—such as not turning on or not being recognized by the computer—the peripheral may require more power than is available. If you have a USB peripheral or a chain of devices, such as a joystick plugged into a keyboard, which requires more than the available power try one of these options:
Use a USB hub that comes with a power adapter.
Check that the peripheral offers the ability to connect to more than one USB port at once.
Find out if the peripheral comes with a power adapter.
If you cannot confirm your device's use with a hub, connect the device directly to the Apple computer.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

External hard drive not on desktop

niel and limnos began helping me with this problem last week but it solved itself when i left my laptop shut down overnight. now the problem is back.
until today the external drive turned up in disk utility and was verified. now it does not show up anywhere. i have a maxtor and western, once they both showed up - which is what i need because i want to transfer all files on the western to the maxtor - most of the time, only one showed up. i disconnected one thinking that 2 connected external hard drives might demanded too much from the computer. but now, with only one connected for 2 days, no hard drive shows up anywhere. i tried shut down, restart, no hard drive. please help.

Do you repair permissions & reboot after every opdate?
At this point I think you should get Applejack...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15667/applejack
After installing, reboot holding down CMD+s, (+s), then when the DOS like prompt shows, type in...
applejack AUTO
Then let it do all 5 of it's things.
At least it'll eliminate some questions if it doesn't fix it.
The 6 things it does are...
Correct any Disk problems.
Repair Permissions.
Clear out Cache Files.
Repair/check several plist files.
Dump the VM files for a fresh start.
Trash old Log files.
First reboot will be slower, sometimes 2 or 3 restarts will be required for full benefit... my guess is files relying upon other files relying upon other files!
Disconnect the USB cable from any Uninterruptible Power Supply so the system doesn't shut down in the middle of the process.

External hard drives problem

all of the sudden, my lightroom 4 does not see my external hard drives on the library or other tab

I had weird external hard drive issues today too... lightroom was not seeing my files... I could get to them from computer but Lightroom was not seeing them.
First I went to Library> find all missing photos... this took forever. After that was all finished I still wasn't seeing them so I (was frustrated and) clicked out of the program. Went back after my nap, opened the program and went right to them... Lightroom was seeing them!
Good Luck.

External hard drive library and USB flash drive

My iPhoto library is located on my external hard drive (laptop HD too full). I'll bed traveling for Xmas, so copied about 1GB of pics (organized into an album) to the flash drive to take with me. Once disconnected from the external drive (where the library is), how do I access the flash drive pics on my laptop? Will not iPhoto try to find the (disconnected) library?

Hi there
1. How did you copy the 'album' to the flash drive? You can't really export albums, as they are a virtual entity. only the pics therein.
2. On your laptop, connect the flash drive to it and go iPhoto -> File -> Import and imprt them into the Library.
Regards
TD

Another external hard drive problem

I'm sorry if this topic has been brought up before, but I did a search and could not find anything that could relate to my problem.
I recently purchased an external 2.0 usb hard drive for my Windows XP Pro computer. iTunes was located under My Documents/My Music. In order to start making room for my internal hard drive, I moved all of the music under My Music to my external hard drive but was too afraid to move the iTunes folder. The folder is currently located under My Documents.
When I click on iTunes, iTunes does not start up. I re-installed iTunes's latest version to no avail. Is there any way to fix this problem?

Sounds to me like it's failed. You may be able to pull the drive from the enclosure and connect it using a SATA-USB adapter. If the drive itself has failed, it may be possible to recover the data, but data recovery services are not cheap.

External hard drive won't power back up when iMac wakes from sleep

I have the external hard drive connected via USB. I always put my iMac to sleep before going to bed and I wake it up when I come home from work. Except that when I do, the external hard drive doesn't power up. It still shows in Finder, but clicking on it's folders just opens them up as if they were empty. There's no access noise and the drive can't be ejected.I have to switch it's power off and turn it back on for it to spin back up.
At first I thought it was because I had Energy Saver set to power down the drives whenever possible, which works just fine when it's on, the drive powers on and off as needed just as long as the iMac doesn't go to sleep. I turned it off just to make sure and it made no difference. As soon as the iMac goes to sleep and the drives powers down, it will not come back on without a power cycle once the iMac wakes.
I've used this drive in an old Macbook for years without having this problem. The only difference is that the Macbook was on 10.6.8. I was thinking about buying a 4 bay USB enclosure and filling it up with hard drives, but I'm not about to do that if every time I put the iMac to sleep, the whole thing will not power back on without a power cycle.
Any help would be much appreciated.

Not sure if you managed to get this issue resolved yet Marcus, but I too have a similar problem:
Currently I'm upgrading from Leopard to Lion (via Snow Leopard) on both an iMac and MacBook Pro (both Intel), but before I proceed with the OSX upgrade I wanted to back everything up. Thus far I have partitioned an external firewire drive (G Drive - one that is bootable), and cloned each machine using Carbon Copy Cloner to it's own partition (both GUID). There is plenty of space left over on each partition.
The issue - I can boot the OS X from the external drive on the MacBook Pro but not on the iMac.
When I restart and hold down Option on the iMac the only drive that appears is the HDD, not the other two selectable drives that are visible if I boot up on the MacBook Pro. On the iMac in System Prefs > Startup Disc I can see all 3 drives but when I select it and restart, the machine freezes on the grey loading screen and goes no further.
Not that it should make a difference, but there is a 3rd partition on the external drive that is currently empty (for extra storage).
Any help is greatly appreciated - I can't find any relevant answers elsewhere. Thanks,
Dan

Can I disconnect the external hard drive even if Time Machine is set to back up every so often?

I noticed that Time Machine backs up the system ever so often. What happens if I disconnect the external hard drive I'm using as the back up and Time Machine tries to initiate a back up? Will it corrupt anything?

As long as you properly eject the drive before unplugging it, TM will detect that is no longer mounted and will not do anything until you plug it back and OS X mounts the drive again.
TM was designed with the knowledge in mind that many people would be using it with laptops, and thus inherently unplugging and plugginh in their TM backup devices many times.

Got a new MBP and old external hard drive is too full for backup

I just got a new MBP and got all my data migrated and everything. I plugged my external hard drive in to run a backup, and it apparently is too full to run a backup of the new computer. Even though all the files are the same (mostly), I guess it's not going to overwrite anything because it's a new computer. Should I just get a new backup drive and start fresh for this computer. Should I reformat my old backup drive (and if so, how?)? Advice?

You should always have two backups of all vital data in any regard. A good 1TB Toshiba USB is $65
If there is NOTHING on the external HD you cant lose, format in disk utility > erase > format MAC OSX extended journaled.
then apply a Time Machine backup to the old HD of your new computer. That will free of a great deal of space.
However you should still have a 2nd backup of data. 2 backups is 1, and 1 is none.

How can I put my recently purchased iTunes movies on to my thumb drive and WD My Passport external hard drive. My Mac keeps saying "can't be copy because it is too large for the volumes format

How can I put my recently purchased iTunes movies onto my thumb drive and WD my passport external hard drive.My Mac is saying that can't be copied because it is too large for volumes format

[file] is too large for the volumes format
That is usually an indication that the Volume was never Erased or Partitioned for GUID partition table and Mac OS, and is still in a Windows format.
Mac OS X Extended (journaled) has no such file-size limitations

External hard drives ejecting after iMac wakes from sleep.

External hard drive keeps ejecting after iMac wakes from sleep. TM does not recognise, so have to unplug then re plug in Ext HD, only then TM will perform a back up. Not seamless backups. Help to resolve would be grand

Ive got the same problem with a Western Digital 500GB My Book Pro on my iMac Ive tried it on a few other machines and I think its happened on them, I say think because it was only when it had happened a couple of time that I started to take notice of circumstances etc and ive only had the drive a week, downloaded what may be a more uptodate "My Button manager" from the WD site still happened but Ive got this idea that it didnt happen on one machine which may not have had the MyButton thing on at that time, have you solved it yet I am using USB at the moment.
20" iMac 2.13Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Need Help with External Hard drives and too much music

I am not terribly tech-savvy, and I need your help. I have a G5 PPC dual processor with an internal 250GB drive. I have two seagate firewire/USB2 external hard drives. One is 250GB and one is 350GB. I want to know how to use them to get my Mac to run faster and better.
My original hard drive is 7GB shy of being full. Almost half of this is my itunes library which is over 100GB. The older (250GB) hard drive has about 150GB of photos/videos.
My Mac is running slow as molasses and when I power up the external hard drives it slows down to what I recall my original Mac Plus ran like.
I use the G5 primarily to work with photos, illustrations and creating the occasional DVD with video and photos. the apps I use most often are Photoshop, Illustrator and Painter. I always listen to music while work.
I hope all of this information is helpful! Here is my question:
What is the best way for me to set up and use these external hard drives to return my G5 to its original blazing (to me) fast speed?
PPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I think you should look at adding two 500GB internal drives. I'd say Maxtor MaxLine Pro for cost, but they also run much warmer (43ºC even when nearly doing zilch) so I'd go with WD RE2 500GB for $40 ea. more.
dump whatever you don't need, trash anything that is hogging space and is just temp file or useless cache. Web browsers can leave behind a ton of small files eating up tens of MBs.
Use SuperDuper to backup/clone your drive.
Disk Warrior 4 to repair (after it gets to 15% free, or just forget for now).
A 250GB drive formats to 240GB and you have ~3% free it looks like.
For every data drive plan to have two backup drives.
Keep your boot drive to 40% used.
And your data drive to 60%.
Backups can go a little higher.
Drives are cheap and inexpensive, especially for the space and performance. And they have improved SATA over the years it has been out.
By doing a backup followed by erasing your drive, and then restoring it, using SuperDuper, which optimizes the organization, skips copying temp files that aren't needed, it also defragments your files. I would do backup daily to different sets that you "rotate." And before any OS update. And do the erase and restore probably every 2 months.
Make sure you keep one drive partition somewhere that is just your disk utility emergency boot drive that is not a copy of working system, used for doing repairs like running Disk Warrior and Disk Utility.
You may need to repair; backup; even erase and restore your external drives. Rather than spend on vendor made case, just pick up a good FireWire case either with drive, or bare (and add your own). I think it'd add 500GB FW drive though.
Why?
To begin backup of your current drive. To leave your other FW drives "as is" for now.
Then install a new internal 500GB drive as well so you now have a good current backup, and you have moved your data off 250GB to 500GB. If anything happens, you have one off line FW backup.
Then begin to clean up, organize, and get your FW drives working. It sure sounds like they have had some directory or file problems.
You can find a lot of Firewire and SATA drive choices over at OWC:
http://www.macsales.com/firewire/

Does the time capsule act as an external hard drive too?

I haven't got the time capsule but I'm thinking about getting it but I want to know does it Work as an external hard drive too, so can you store things like music files and things on there and access them anytime?

It cannot be plugged in via usb.. only by ethernet.. so it is not really external hard disk.. it is network storage but not a NAS.. it is designed purely as a target for Time Machine backups.. primarily for laptops with wireless only connections.. eg MBA as they do not have ethernet.
As a place to store files the TC can be pressed into service but is really poor in having no automated method to back itself up.. and they do die which leaves them a sealed unit which Apple refuse to fix or open even to recover your data.
Buy a NAS from any of the major companies.. if you want Network storage..
Buy a USB drive from any of the major companies if you want something to plug into your computer for storage.
TC is neither.. arthur or martha.

Why does external hard drive have to wake up?

I understand that in Finder if I want to look at a file then it might have to wake up my external hard drive.
Why is it the case that when I perform a seemingly unrelated action - such as bringing up a dialogue box in Photoshop, viewing developer tools in Chrome, or playing the next track of a file sitting on a folder on my desktop - forces the external drive to wake up, and forces me to wait until the wakeup whilst it does so?
Yes, I want the drive to sleep as much as possible. It's only there for time machine backups which I rely on, and the less the drive is spinning the lower the chances are of the drive having an issue. So turning off "sleep when inactive" is NOT a solution.

Not sure why but I had the same issue when I was using FW drives and ML. Later I upgraded to Mavericks and changed over to USB3 drive with my new Mini and now no longer have that issue. Must be something between the OS and the type of drive but not sure what the critical component is.

External hard drive wake up too often

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for