External hard drives always spinning....is this normal?

I have a few external hard drives for my Mac Pro, a couple Weibetech 1TB drives, and a Drobo device that I just got to work as a backup. I just switched to this Mac Pro from a Macbook, and I am noticing my external drives are always spinning, and sometimes get pretty warm. Is this normal? The drobo's fan has been on all day, and I am not using it for anything. Is this normal?
Also, if the drives are not spun up, I notice that when I do certain things, my computer spins all my drives up, and wheel spins, even if what I am doing has nothing to do with that drive. I would think that the computer would wait until you tried to access the drive to spin it up.

I've seen the useless spinup of external drives accompanied by the spinning beachball too.
It usually happens when Finder or Spotlight are started/accessed/used. (for example, I press cmd+space to open spotlight, then I have to wait for my external drives to complete spinup before I can do anything... it just sits there, showing me a spinning beachball...)
I worked around this by telling Spotlight not to index my external drives, but now I can't use Spotlight for searching files on these drives...
Let's hope this is handled better in SL...
As to why they're sometimes on all day and sometimes not, no idea. Try the free application "What's Keeping Me?" to see if there is any process still attached to a file on that drive. Perhaps some process is keeping OSX from putting these drives to sleep...

Similar Messages

Why are my external hard drives always spinning up?

DESKTOP MAC.
I came home to my Mac after a day away, and found one of my external hard drives had been running apparently all day. The only thing I had open was Camino and iTunes, and also Activity Monitor.
DESKTOP MAC.
I often find the other hard drive(s) spin up at seemingly random times, for instance as soon as I sat down and started browsing the Web, the other external hard drive also spun up.
Why? I didn't do anything which would call for them to be active.
Is there any way to tell if certain applications have incorrectly placed important files on the external HD's (i.e. Safari putting its cache there, or iTunes linking to songs on an external)?
Are there utilities which can tell me which applications are banging on which disks or volumes?
DESKTOP MAC. Not laptop. Please do not give answers which use the words "sleep", "clamshell" or "battery". Again this is a desktop Mac not a laptop.
Oh and one other thing. It's a desktop Mac. Not a laptop. External drives are USB. Also it's a desktop Mac.

If it is a desktop machine, you want the hard drives to keep running all the time; it is disastrous to their longevity to be stopping and starting repeatedly.
I have a Seagate (that is NOT a recommendation) that I bought at a local PC outlet, and it insists on stopping and starting every 35 seconds or so, when I am not using the machine.
I found the utility Keep Drive Spinning on Apple’s web site ( www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/keepdrivespinning.html ) and I added it to my login items. During the boot process, it shows a dialogue; I click on a volume on the drive and type in 33 (seconds).
Thanks, Jon Stovell!!
p.s. There is a setting “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible” in System Preferences: Energy Saver. This should be off, for the same reason; this is strictly for laptops, in my opinion.
p.p.s. If I leave my machine on, while I am not using it for a day or so, I put it to Sleep; under those circumstances, Keep Drive Spinning does allow the machine to sleep properly.

Does an external hard drive ALWAYS need to be connected to my mbp with retina display for Time Machine?

Does an external hard drive ALWAYS need to be connected to my mbp (OS 10.10.1) with retina display for Time Machine? Or can it be connected once a week or whenever I want? I used to have an external drive always connected to my previous mbp, but it made moving my mbp around a bit of a hassle with it connected...

When the backup drive is not connected, some of the free space on the internal drive will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. Local snapshots will protect you from unintended file deletions, but not from a drive failure. You should only go as long between backups as you're willing to lose data. If losing a week's worth of work is acceptable to you, then that backup frequency is OK. Otherwise, it isn't.

Why will photoshop not open after loading it to new iMac computer from an external hard drive and I get this message: Licensing for this product has stopped working:error code: 150:30

Why will Photoshop CS4 not open after loading to new iMac from an external hard drive and I get this message: Licensing for this product has stopped working:error code: 150:30

A Photoshop installation is tied to the machine it was installed on. Moving it to or from a hard drive breaks the licensing.
The answer is easy: Reinstall CS4 from your disc. and apply all updates.
Gene

External hard drive not spinning up

Hi,
I have a 160GB Freecom FHD-3 external hard drive connected to my iBook with USB 2.0 that I use to store all my music / movies etc. I have a slight problem with this drive and i was wondering if anyone could help me.
Firstly when i turn the iBook on with the drive connected it takes a long time (>3 mins) to boot up. Secondly if the drive is connected and i put the iBook to sleep, the drive spins down and automatically powers off. When i wake the iBook the external drive does not spin up and my iBook freezes with the spinning pizza of death as it is desparately searching for the external HD with my iTunes music folder in.
I did not have this problem with my Mac Mini and i was wondering if there was anything i could do to sort it out.
Cheers

dickonhowell, Welcome to the discussion area!
I am guessing that the Mac mini keeps the USB ports powered even when sleeping. I would bet that the iBook turns off the USB ports when sleeping. That is probably why you experience different things with the 2 different Macs.

External Hard Drive Causing Spinning Beach Ball - 27" iMac

I have a brand new 27" iMac with the Core i7 processor. There are no modifications to the unit. I do however have a portable USB hard drive plugged into the unit. Now I imagine that after some time the iMac is putting the USB hard drive to sleep because of non-use. However, after I walk away from the iMac (my iMac is set to sleep after 3 hours) for 30 minutes or so and come back and start using some applications one will eventually slow down and the spinning beach ball appears. For example, when I come back to the iMac after 30 minutes and log back in and launch Mail everything is fine. Then I might launch Safari and all of a sudden the USB hard drive spins up and the spinning beach ball appears. Can someone tell me how to correct this so it does not cause these hang-ups?
Thanks in advance,
Mike

Hi Mike,
Western Digital external HDs are known for their rather 'dubious' sleep/No-sleep behaviour.
I have two older ones myself with the same oddity.
Have a look here http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=300839 and maybe use the app mentioned there http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/31158/keep-drive-spinning
Regards
Stefan

Want to upload files from an external hard drive. How does this work?

I am new to the Mac world and have old files from my PC that I want to transfer on to my Time Capsule.

Click anywhere on the open desktop so that the Finder menus are displayed at the top of the screen.
Click Go > Network
Double click the Time Capsule icon, then double click the icon representing the drive to mount it on the Mac's desktop. It is named "Data" unless you have changed it
You can drag/drop files to the "Data" icon on the desktop
235 GB is going to take forever if you try to do this using wireless. If at all possible, connect an Ethernet cable from your Mac to one of the LAN <-> ports on the Time Capsule.
Even using Ethernet, you are probably looking at 10-12 hours for the file transfer. All bets are off with wireless only, but a guess would be several days....or even more.

Mouth To Mouth On This External Hard Drive

My 1st post here so hello people...
Bad stuff.. I read a thread posted in December about something related to this and i tried all the suggestions but nothings worked for me yet.. I really hope someone can help me..
I run a G5 1.8 17" i-Mac.. 10.3.9? Panther..
I bought an External Hard Drive 2 weeks ago : Formac 500Gb XTR Firewire.
I installed it a few days ago and i've been stacking it with nothing but my music archive that i had stored in various locations since... I got to 80Gb... After i had moved all the previous i-Tunes library over i killed it.
Yesterday i turned the Formac off for the 1st time... Instead of clicking eject i stupidly turned it off with the switch , then recieved a warning window but by this time it was too late.
Now when i start up, the external hard drive isn't mounted.
I've tried several things :
I downloaded a trial version of 'Drive Genius' - When i ran this and scanned for my devices the Formac didn't show.
I looked in disc utilty - Nothing is listed
I turned off for a couple of hours unplugged everything by the main power supply, including the firewire ports - Still nothing
I changed the firwire port that the Formac was connected to.
When i look in the apple menu > About this mac.. Then go into the Firewire tree - When the Formac is unplugged, nothing is listed under Firewire.. When the Formac is connected it reads Firewire - Firewire Device and underneath that it says 800Mb/Second (This is the speed that the Formac runs at)...< ? I find this strange
Now i presume that all the data is still inside the Formac, it's getting the machine to recognise the external hard drives presence.
Before this tragedy, the readout on the Formac had a green light which would flash... But now when i connect it to the power the green light comes on at a constant illumination for around 10 to 15 seconds and then nothing.
I really hope someones got some answers cos i'm climbing the walls about this serious.
Many thanks in advance.
<br>
i-Mac G5 1.8 17" 1.256Gb Mac OS X (10.3.9) G5 1.8 17"

I bought an External Hard Drive 2 weeks ago : Formac
500Gb XTR Firewire.
Yesterday i turned the Formac off for the 1st time...
Instead of clicking eject i stupidly turned it off
with the switch , then recieved a warning window but
by this time it was too late.
Now when i start up, the external hard drive isn't
mounted.
I've tried several things :
I downloaded a trial version of 'Drive Genius' - When
i ran this and scanned for my devices the Formac
didn't show.
I looked in disc utilty - Nothing is listed
I turned off for a couple of hours unplugged
everything by the main power supply, including the
firewire ports - Still nothing
I changed the firwire port that the Formac was
connected to.
When i look in the apple menu > About this mac.. Then
go into the Firewire tree - When the Formac is
unplugged, nothing is listed under Firewire.. When
the Formac is connected it reads Firewire - Firewire
Device and underneath that it says 800Mb/Second (This
is the speed that the Formac runs at)...< ? I find
this strange
Now i presume that all the data is still inside the
Formac, it's getting the machine to recognise the
external hard drives presence.
Before this tragedy, the readout on the Formac had a
green light which would flash... But now when i
connect it to the power the green light comes on at a
constant illumination for around 10 to 15 seconds and
then nothing.
I really hope someones got some answers cos i'm
climbing the walls about this serious.
Many thanks in advance.
<br>
i-Mac G5 1.8 17"
1.256Gb Mac OS X (10.3.9) G5 1.8 17"
If the drive does not show up in Disk Utility, you have a hardware problem. DiskWarrior, or any other software, will not help if the drive is not visible to the system. If the disk was formatted HFS+ Journaled (the normal for OSX), shutting off the power before ejecting should cause no problem, except for any file that was being written at the time. In any case, it would not cause the problems you are seeing. Does the manual say what the green light means?
Can you hear the drive spin when you turn on the power? If the drive does not start, sometimes a sharp twist of the case will help, but this usually is only needed for old drives.
If the drive is 800MHZ FireWire and plugged into a 800MHz port, that's the speed System Profiler will show, even though the drive cannot transfer data that fast. This does indicate that the FireWire part of the drive enclosure is working. It's possible the 12V part of the power supply has failed. The 5V part would keep the FireWire port and the indicator light working, but the 12V part is needed to spin the drive. If you are lucky, a new enclosure or power supply will fix the problem, and you will not lose any data. If the drive itself has failed, it will cost a LOT of money to recover the data.

I am trying to backup my Itunes onto my external hard drive. I am at the step where I on Itunes, click on File - Library - Organize library. I am suppose to check mark both boxes there, It won't allow me to check mark the second box, why? How to fix this.

I am trying to backup my Itunes onto my external hard drive. I am at the step where I on Itunes, click on File ->Library ->Organize library. I am suppose to check mark both boxes there, the first being "Consolidate Files" & the second being "Reorganize files in the folder 'Itunes Media'. I am able to checkmark the first box but It won't allow me to check mark the second box, why? How can i fix this? Please help!

Well you must have made a mistake somewhere. The last instruction of step four reads:
When you've found your iTunes library folder, drag that folder to your external hard drive. This will begin the iTunes backup. The amount of time the backup will take depends on the size of your library. When the transfer is done, your backup is complete and your external hard drive can be disconnected.
Normally dragging content from to a new location on a different drive will result in a copy action which is what you were supposed to do. At a guess you somehow managed to move the iTunes folder. Then when you started iTunes it created a new blank library for you assuming it had just been installed rather that raising a warning.
Close iTunes. Rename the iTunes folder on the internal drive as iTunes (Empty) then copy the iTunes folder from the external back into the User's Music folder. Start iTunes. All should be well.
When you've made sure it all works please read my User Tip and use that method to backup in future. Since you already have a folder with the backup in place you can skip the "Make New" operation in the fourth step and simply choose the external folder.
tt2

My Mac is telling me that my disk is full. I have bought an external hard drive and have just listened to a youtube tutorial on how to move iTunes library to the external hard drive. If I do this can I still load new media on my Mac without the external?

my Mac is telling me that my disk is full. I have bought an external hard drive and watched a youtube tutorial on moving iTunes library to external hard drive. Will I still be able to use iTunes on my Mac for new media or will this now only work through my external hard drive?

To do this you need to learn the details of how iTunes works. For example, you just said, "leave my iTunes on my computer". iTunes is the application itself so of course it has to be on your computer. That said, I therefore don't know what you mean when you say leave iTunes on your computer. The phrasing of your question suggests to me, if I may be frank, you don't understand how iTunes works fully and we can't just give you a "do this" answer and have it work out. It would be too easy to make a mess of things.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
Yes, you can download media and delete it again (but if it is from the iTunes Store there is the possibility you can't always download it again). Of course if you want to keep a copy you can archive it. I have done that with some files for which I have no room on my computer. I transfer them to an external hard drive and delete the reference to the file (but not the file itself) from my library. If I want a quick listen I go to the file on the drive and use Quicktime player or something else non-iTunes so I don't have to have it added to iTunes and delete again. I don't know if that is the solution you are looking for. I could leave the reference in iTunes but if the file can't be located by iTunes it will tell me there is a broken link = ! I guess I could live with that except I periodically scan my library for broken links and don't want it getting confused with ones I have done deliberately and ones suggesting I am really missing a file somewhere.
Another possibility is to make a second iTunes library for material you are archiving and only use that library when the computer is using the external drive. There are tricky aspects to dong that but it is a possibility too.
The simple solution for most people with computers with tiny drives (as most seem to be these days) is to put their whole iTunes library on an external drive and use it from there.

I have all my music on my external hard drive when I try to add it to iTunes it is automatically added to my MacBook Pro's hard drive. How do I stop this from happening? I just want the music to stay on the external hard drive. Thanks!

I have all my music on my external hard drive when I try to add it to iTunes it is automatically added to my MacBook Pro's hard drive. How do I stop this from happening? I just want the music to stay on the external hard drive. Thanks!

This is true of course, but doesn't cover the situation where some files are in the iTunes Media folder and others are on an external drive. In my case I keep my music in the Media folder and all my films on an external drive (there are too many to have on the internal drive). In iTunes 11, and before, it was easy to add those external files by holding down the alt/opt key while dragging to the sidebar. In iTunes 12 this is no longer possible. There are several workarounds: use TuneSpan to move the file after it's been added; delete the file from the Media folder and empty the trash then use iTunes Get Info which will report the file is missing and allow you to locate it; constantly switch the Add to iTunes toggle on and off as required. All of these require a lot more work than just holding down the alt/opt key while adding.
It constantly gets harder.

Files on external hard drive now Inaccessible

Hello,
I am currently using a 2010 13 inch 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook and running OSX Lion (I upgraded in July from Snow Leopard). I have recently come across a problem with my computer recognizing files that are on my external hard drive.
This past Friday (October 7th, 2011), I connected my external hard drive to a PC running Windows XP in order to copy a file over for school. The file that was copied over was a folder containing GIS (Geographical Information Systems) -related files. These files are not usable on Macs because the ArcGIS software is only available on Windows. In the past, these files have of course not been recognizable but it had no influence on my computer's ability to recognize all of the other files on my external hard drive. When I plugged the hard drive back into my Mac this past Sunday (October 9th, 2011), none of the folders or files that were previously there were visible. Instead, the hard drive contained files of the same names as my folders and with the extension ".lnk" Apparently this is some sort of Windows file. The strange thing is, I have connected to PCs running Windows XP before and this has not happened in the past.
To reitterate, my external hard drive was full of folders which had been usable by both Macs and PCs alike, but now they are no longer visible and instead all that is viewable on my external hard drive are files with the extension ".lnk" My Mac has always been able to view these files, but now they no longer appear.
Strangely enough, when I connected my external hard drive to my professor's MacBook Pro (I'm not sure of the specifications) running OSX Leopard, all of my files and folders were visible and useable. The files with the ".lnk" extension remained, but the files and folders that were not visible on my machine were now visible and useable.
Currently, when I plug in and open my external hard drive on my Mac this is what I see. Normally all of these files (except the MediaID.bin file) would appear as normal blue folders, but as you can see, they are no longer accessible. How can I fix this? Is there a way that I can get my Mac to start recognizing the files on my external hard drive again? Or do I have to revert to an older version of OSX? Please help!
Thanks!

.lnk file are alias file on windows. Such alias coudn't be read by Mac OS X.
The strange thing is, that there are folders visible on your professors MacBook.
Open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities) and type in
ls -la /Volumes/DATA
Hit enter and post the output here.

Error message pop up when connecting external hard drive to eMac

Hi,
The external hard drive's icon don't show on desktop when the Maxtor 6Y160P0 Media connected to the eMac. Running the Disk Utilities still can detect the external hard drive.
After a while, it pop up a message shows that "You have inserted a disk containing no volumes that Mac OS X can read. To continue with the disk inserted, click Ignore." It has three options – Initialize, Ignore, Eject. Choosed "Ignore" to continue but useless. The external hard drive still spinning but can't access to backup data.
Sometime the icon showed after restart the external hard drive, unpluged the cables and pluged in again then restart the eMac. Sometime after doing these also no response.
Is there a fix for this?
Thank you!

If the previous user always SHUT DOWN the computer (vs. just sleeping it) then that wouldn't be the cause because when you shut down, the Mac OS closed up everything and dismounts the drives anyway. So shutting down without ejecting the hard drive and then turn the drive off after the computer is off is perfectly safe.
Is there something on the drive now that you need or would it be ok to simply reformat it and start over?
Patrick

External hard drives and application help

i am relatively new to the world of computers and what i can do .i'm getting an external hard drive not only to back up my mac but to allow me to add new virtual synths for my music creations ,as i am running out of space on my internal hard drive i want to download applications to the external hard drive .if i do this will i be able to run the application on my mac through my sequencer or would i have to get a new internal hard drive with more storage.for example i'd like to upload omnisphere to the external drive and use the vst through my mac .will this work ? thank you in advance to anyone that can help

Ditto to what Andy said.
You might be better off getting two external HDDs; one as a dedicated data drive for your Home folder and the other as a backup for your entire system. Do not put your data and the backup on the same drive. Putting the Home folder on its own drive will free a lot of space on the int HDD for apps.
Here is how to move the Home folder with all of your data to an ext HDD and have Mac OS X recognize it;
Here is a more detailed version of moving the home folder that I created in the past for this situation;
1. Go to Macintosh HD/Users/shortname/. Shortname is your Home folder and will have a "house" icon. Copy this folder to the ext HDD by drag & drop. When dragging & dropping from one drive to another the originals are not moved, merely copied to the new location. At this point the folder will not have the "house" icon, because it is not yet recognized by Mac OS X as the active Home folder.
2. Go to System Preferences/Accounts. Click the padlock in the lower left and enter your password to unlock the Accounts pane. Control click on your account's name in the left-side column to reveal an Advanced Options in the contextual menu. Click Advanced Options.
3. You will only be concerned with the Home Directory option. This is the path that Mac OS X uses to locate your home folder when you login. It will show the path as /Users/shortname.
Click the Choose button and browse to the Home folder that you copied to the ext HDD in Step 1. After you select the new home folder the Home Directory path should change to something similar to /Volumes/shortname.
4. Click OK on the Advance Options dropdown sheet to accept the change. Quit System Preferences. Restart the computer and login as normal.
5. To confirm that the copied home folder on the ext HDD is now the active Home folder, using a Finder window browse to the folder on the ext HDD and confirm that it now sports the house icon.
6. You have successfully moved your Home folder to the ext HDD, then the original Home folder in Machintosh HD/Users/shortname/, including all of its contents can be safely deleted.

Unformatted External Hard Drive Now Not Navigable in Finder

All,
I have an external hard drive that was originally formatted in FAT32.
I had files on the hard drive that I did not want to lose and chose not to format it when Time Machine tried to do its thing.
Nevertheless, unlike other external hard drives that I use, this one now shows a "Time Machine hard drive" icon on my desktop.
When I open finder, the hard drive shows up and I can even double-click on the icon to see the files and directories that I have.
However, when I try to open one of those files or directories, the finder window "crashes" taking me back to the desktop.
If I keep the hard drive plugged in long enough, I'll eventually get a "Time Machine Error" message saying, "The backup volume is not in Mac OS Extended (journaled) format, which is required."
I'm fine with Time Machine not working on this HD, but not fine with not being able to look through the hard drive.
Can I get rid of whatever Time Machine tried to do to it and get it back to normal?
Thanks!

In the TM Pref panel simply slide the OFF-ON switch to OFF.

External hard drives always spinning....is this normal?

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