Hard Drive Spin Down....Good or Bad??

'Two questions, really, but first some background. I have an earlier Mac Pro running 10.7.3 (as I recall). I also have a Sonos music system. All the hard drive bays in the Mac Pro are occupied. The first has a 2 TB Western Digital RE that has my OS and all my files on it. Bay's 2 and 3 have two 3TB drives from Hitachi which are mirrored and serve as my internal daily backup which is run and cloned by CCC. The fourth drive is another RE that has copies of all my music. I simply copy my two iTunes folders and any other music I want the Sonos system to access to this fourth drive. My reason for doing this is that I wanted to minimize the run time of my main hard drive as not so long ago, I had two Seagate drives go belly up on me. All the music on the fourth drive (that serves the Sonos system) comes from my main hard drive which is backed up to the two mirrored internal drives as well as a G-Technolgy mirrored external drive, so I'm not concerned with backing up the drive serving the Sonos system. So......
Question one is: Which is better for drives in general, to keep them spinning all the time, or to allow or force them to spin down if they aren't being accessed?
Question two is: If it is better to spin down a drive, how can I selectively spin down some drives and not others?
For instance, I'm thinking that it is better to spin drives down, then I'd like to be able to spin down drive #1 with my OS but not the Sonos drive because the Sonos system prefers that the drive not spin down or there are connection errors.
Thanks for all your answers and suggestions!

I understand the limitions of mirrored drives, but my main drive is not mirrored. What is mirrored are my backup drives. One daily backup onto mirrored drives in bay's 3 and 4 in the Mac Pro. And a less frequent backup on mirrored drives that are stored in a fireproof safe in the garage. Should my main, non-mirrored drive fail (hopefully it'll be a long time as it's an enterprise class drive), I've then got any one of four cloned drives to choose from. Of course, I would choose the most recent ones that are internal, but should something catastrophic like a fire occur, I'd then have two identical cloned and bootable drives in the garage.
I recognize that in the case of a real catastrophy, the drives in the garage won't be as current as the drives in the Mac Pro, but in both cases, the backups themselves are pretty robust because they are mirrored. If one backup drive fails, the other will likely be fine and I can then easily proceed from there.
It set up properly, mirrored drives offer some great redundency in case of hard drive failure. What prompted me to go this route was three drive failures in one year, all of which were Seagate Barracuda drives and relatively new. And two of them were backup drives. My backup drives are now Hitachi and mirrored in case one dies. And CCC makes it so I can just plug the backup drive into my #1 bay and I'm back up in business. Except for MS Office which somehow limits the number of times it can be cloned and you have to call MS and get a new product code. Easy to do, but a pain. I learned this as a result of swapping cloned drives in and out of my wife's MacBook. It all worked perfectly until I did it once too many times and MS wouldn't load. Hence the call to MS.
Thanks for all your feedback!
Oh, and any info on controling which drives spin down and which don't?

Similar Messages

Hard drive spin down - good or bad for the drives

Having had a few drives fail recently, I've started to wonder about the whole issue of the energy saver preference for having hard drives spin down. I've always had it disabled because it seems to be generally believed that that's the way to work on a fcp (or avid for that matter) editing system. But now that I've started imagining every drive failing, I'm wondering whether it makes sense to perhaps have another user account that I switch to for nonediting moments in which the spin down option is enabled.
Any opinions out there?

Drive manufacturors report a MTBF (mean time between failures) often in the 200,000 hours range. This works out to something like 22 years. Drives that fail in less time than that are often subjected to three things:
- heat
- voltage irregularities - spikes or brownouts
- physical shocks
oh, and did I mention heat?
As drive RPM increases, so does energy consumption and heat. The best thing you can do for drives is to keep them in a cool, well ventilated location and to put them on a conditioned power supply.
FWIW, I have scsi drives that are over 10 years old running everyday with no issues.
Spindown seems to be an energy saver issue but I wonder about the cycle of powering down and back up over and over and over. It seems like that would put much more stress on bearings, motors and the like.
good luck.
x

Hard drive spins down and have to do a hard reboot

I have an Intel iMac 3.06 (April 2008). Ever since I upgraded to Snow Leopard especially when I am using itunes (9.02) (downloading) the hard drive spins down for no reason at all.The energy settings are fine. The only option I have is to hold the power button down for 5 sec and reboot when it happens. I know this has been an issue with other intel iMacs but when the "fix" for other machines was available it said my machine did not need it. I beg to differ. This is getting very annoying as I am sure it is not doing the hard drive any good having to hard reboot all the time.
I have tried the power management reset which has not resolved the problem.

Hi David
Welcome to Apple Discussions
1. In the Energy Saver preference try setting Computer sleep: to "Never" and make sure the the box "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" is unchecked.
2. Try resetting the System Management Controller as described in the article below.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543
Now then if you are still having a problem you might also:
1. Use the Restore Default button on the Energy Saver preference panel and then reselect your sleep settings.
or
2. Go to: Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences > SystemConfiguration and trash the "com.apple.PowerManagement.plist" which also restore's the Energy Saver preference to default, then go back to the Energy Saver preference and reselect your sleep settings.
Dennis

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

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.

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

PB17 internal drive spins down during bootup; computer shuts down

my internal hard drive has crashed 3 times in the last week, each time on boot-up during the grey screen spinning wheel mode. the wheel will stop spinning, and simultaneously i can hear the internal drive spin down, then the computer shuts down on its own. i am able to boot from any external bootable hard drive.
when i boot from any external drive, the internal drive does not mount. when launching the utility Drive Genius from the external drive, the internal drive still doesn't mount but does list the drive in the list of volumes/device window and does list the details of the drive. the drive is listed with its BSD name, not its DisplayName.
Drive Genius is able to DUPLICATE the internal drive, and i'm able to boot from that duplication. if i select REPAIR, Drive Genius goes thru it's process of examining but is never able to actually repair the drive. for each time that the drive has crashed, if i select the REBUILD option, even though it always reports back that it was unable to repair the drive, when finished with the report, the drive mounts automatically with the correct volume display name. i am then able to boot from the internal drive, and everything works fine...till the next crash.
Apple's disk utility hasnt been any help, although i've repaired permissions successfully after recovering from each crash.
any thoughts?

If your drive happens to be failing, then there is nothing that any software application can do to fix it. Maybe you should boot from the Install & Restore DVD that came with your PowerBook holding down the Option key, and run Apple Hardware Test to see if that provides any insight....
Have you considered reformatting the PB's drive and reinstalling your system?
Good luck.

Hard drive spins very fast during youtube viewing

My hard drive spins fast every time I watch youtube or any other video streaming sites. Is it normal? or bad. You will know that the HD spins if the fan is on right?
HELP...

Hi dattebayo: If the fan is spinning up while viewing videos or other CPU intensive activities, that is what it is meant to do. Without that the CPU and the computer in general would shut down pretty quickly. The program I mnetioned earlier is available here. http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=7
Stedman

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.

Excessive Hard Drive Spinup/-down

Hi!
I have my Mac Pro equipped with four hard drives:
Drive 1: 1 partition Mac OS X 10.6.2, 1 partition Boot Camp
Drive 2: 1 partition user home folders, 1 partition games
Drive 3: Downloads / Storage
Drive 4: Backups
Sometimes I leave the machine running over night doing downloads etc. When I wake up in the morning, I can hear at least two drives spinning down, then spinning up again only a few seconds later, spinning down again within a few minutes and so on. I fear they are doing that all night long.
Unfortunately, I can't really track which drives are affected, because when I check sleep status with SpindownHD from the developer tools, this interferes with the process and they don't spin down anymore. Sometimes I can see them spinning up, and it seems to be drives 3 and 4, though I can't be exactly sure that those are not just waking up from "regular" sleep.
My first thought was that OS X has some issues with the user home folders not being located on the system drive, but it seems that the user partition is unaffected.
Another special thing about my configuration is that the Downloads folder in my user folder is an Alias to the Storage drive (drive 3). That folder is used in Vuze (which usually is the software running over night) as the destination for finished downloads (not temporary files). Most of the time there are no downloads being finished, so it's not copying the finished downloads to the Storage drive that makes it spin up. But perhaps it's Vuze having a lock on the drive that prevents it from seleeping properly?
Setting different sleep times in SpindownHD or disabling hard drive sleep in SpindownHD or System Preferences (which actually sets it to 3hrs, as I have read) doesn't have any effect, nor has resetting PRAM.
Any hints would be appreciated!
Thanks!
Timo
Message was edited by: TaipanX
Message was edited by: TaipanX

i'll add a "me too" to the discussion. I have two firewire external drives connected to the mac mini. I used target disk mode to put all my user accounts from one of the backups onto the mini, but otherwise the mini is functioning fine as the boot drive, and it is a stock configuration. The external disks do not have to be connected so as fas I can tell there is no reason for them to spin up until I access them or until my backup program does. On my previous machine (iMac G5) I was running 10.4.11 with no hard disk spin up or down issues. Now I hear clicks for the spin up and down every day, throughout the day.
My request is for an Apple expert to please reply and either answer this thread or point us to one that gives more insight. Premature hard drive failure is my concern.
thanks.

My hard drive melted down and I don't have my serial number to reinstall my copy of Flash CS5.5. How can I reacquire it?

my hard drive melted down and had to be replaced. I don't have my serial number or the email from it to reinstall my copy of Flash CS5.5. how do I get a new one? Can someone just verify my purchase and email me a new one?

Does your serial number show on your account page?
https://www.adobe.com/account.html for serial numbers on your Adobe page
If the above doesn't work...
This is an open forum, not Adobe support.. you need Adobe staff support to help
Adobe contact information - http://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html
-Select your product and what you need help with
-Click on the blue box "Still need help? Contact us"

Trying to copy ANY file from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive spins for 45 minutes then fails. I hate this computer and WISH I never would have wasted my money. Any ideas? WD My Passport 2TB Drive, had to buy a program to make the POS write

Trying to copy ANY file from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive spins for 45 minutes then fails. I hate this computer and WISH I never would have wasted my money. Any ideas? WD My Passport 2TB Drive, had to buy a program to make the POS read files. Copies that would take seconds from a Windows based machine never complete. I have to close the transfer or shut off the machine half the time. Worst computer I have EVER owned, crashes non-stop, constantly freezes, and seems like EVERY operation is more complicated with this thing. Literally, my 1997 Compaq was FAR MORE reliable and user friendly.

This is one of the messages I keep getting; The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in -- File Whatever -- can’t be read or written.(Error code -36)
I have copied things to the hard drive in the past, but it has always been incredibly slow, and now just seems to freeze and fail

Fans & hard drive spin, no start up tone or display... help?

I just sold my old G4 tower on ebay, and the buyer tells me there's no start up tone or anything on his monitor, but the hard drive spins and so do the fans. The CD drawer opens but holding "c" and booting from the software disk doesn't work. He's tried resetting the pram, pressing the cuda switch and removing the battery. I of course made sure the computer ran before I shipped it, and in fact this computer has never given me any problems whatsoever. Does anyone have suggestions for what to do from here? Or even a guess as to what happened... I'm confused because there must have been some damage during shipping, but the box was fine and the computer was fine inside as well. On top of that, I'd expect some kind of an impact to affect moving parts like the hard drive, but that spins with no problems, and if it was just a hard drive problem booting from the software disk should work.

Hi, Alex, and welcome to the Discussions!
Any chance that the new Mac owner might join the Discussions and get an independent review and advice from the Members? We'd be happy to help him try to get up and running, as long as it's kept independent from this particular topic (since this really isn't a place for a potential buyer-seller dispute...)
What model Mac are we referring to here?
As previously referred to, the startup memory settings are commonly lost when one has a weak, dead, or defective battery and the Mac is then disconnected from an AC power source for a period of time. Oftentimes, the Mac can be restarted by removing the battery completely, doing a PMU reset, hooking up the power cord, and restarting with the battery removed. This might confirm that the Mac is indeed okay, perhaps maybe just needing a new battery (which he can test with a voltmeter, per Texas Mac Man's Tutorial).
You didn't mention whether or not the owner is using your original monitor, mouse and keyboard. This could be pertinent information in troubleshooting this, if the PMU reset/battery doesn't correct things.
Gary

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

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

Hard Drive Spin Down....Good or Bad??

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for