Hard drive stop spinning after a while

I have a Lenovo laptop, running Arch Linux + KDE. I noticed that when I am on battery, the hard drive stop spinning after a while, and it's very annoying to listen the disk starting again, and again. and again. I'm not interested in save energy with this, so how can I deactivate it?
I thought it was the laptop-mode, but I runned a systemctl status laptop-mode.service, and the service is inactive. Any idea of what could be triggering this?

man hdparm. Check out -B and -S flags. hdparm -B255 -S0 /dev/your_drive should disable any powersaving settings altogether.
You could use udev rule to run hdparm when you swithch to battery, but there are probably more elegant solutions as well.
KDE might handle this via its own power settings as well. I haven't really used KDE ever, so I'm not sure about this, but it's still possible.

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Hard Drive stops spinning while booting

Recently I've been noticing an issue with my 15" MacBook Pro (Late 2008) where when I start the computer up, the hard drive actually stops spinning while booting. In a quiet environment, you can hear the hard drive spin, but then slow down and go silent, not making any noise at all. It will hang at the Apple logo and spinning gear for about a minute, then the hard drive will start up again and finish booting. It's very strange, and it only happens while the computer is starting up.
Booting into Verbose Mode does not yield any answers. I booted to the Lion Recovery partition (which, by the way, boots normally) and used Disk Utility to check the Macintosh HD partition, which did not find any issues with the partition. I have reinstalled Lion, which would temporarily resolve the issue before acting up again, and I've done a full erase and install, again, temporarily resolving the issue before acting up again. I don't know if the drive is failing, even though there are no indicators that it is in the failing stages, or if this is a Lion issue, because this issue was never present when the computer was running Snow Leopard or Leopard. has anyone encountered this issue, or know of a fix??

In an update to this post: I have replaced the hard drive with a new Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 7200RPM hard drive with a fresh install of Mountain Lion. The hard drive worked fine for the first few days, and now the same exact issue as before has returned. Since it looks like its not the OS, nor the hard drive, could it possibly be the hard drive cable? Everything else works fine, its jsut during start-up.

2 firewire hard drives stop mounting after attempting to install dvd burner

Hi....Im really at a loss here....I have 2 200gig firewire hard drives connected to my G4 tower which mounted and worked without a hitch until I tried to install a Lacie firewire dvd burner....now neither of the drives mount or even show up in dik utility on the tower or my powerbook....is there something I could do here?...lol...I dont even know where to start...and to top it off I couldnt get the burner to work on the tower or the powerbook....lol...my whole digital world is screwed right now....thx for reading my disaster story.

Ok this didnt work....I then tried these drives on a friends ibook (which mounted them b4) and same result...Does anybody know where I can get firmware or drivers? Or have a suggestion? anything would be good help thanks.
Jeff
The drives in question:
PM-350F2-M0S Glowie Firewire 3.5 External + Maxtor 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Hard Drive
ME720 3.5 Compact External Firewire + Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 200GB 7200RPM 8MB

Oracle OCI driver stops working after a while of disuse

I am using wl server 8.1, oracle oci driver (oracle 9i client), on solaris.
When i create a connection pool using the oci driver, it connects, and i
test it, and the tests run fine.
The Application works for a few days. Then eventually after disuse, say over
the weekend, I get exceptions in the log (the message is at end of email).
This is because it gives me a sql exception saying it cannot resolve the
service name. The database is up and running, confirmed.
I tried testing the connection pool manually through the console, and it
failed with the service name exception. But it would connect fine when i
used sqlplus to connect to the databse, using the same service name.
Why does this deteriorate over time? Is there a specific test that would
prevent this from happening?
Once i restart the weblogic server, the connection pool connects fine. But
this is not a solution, since I can't be restarting the server all the time.
Any one got any ideas?
-Ayan
------------WEBLOGIC MANAGED SERVER LOG----------
####<Mar 27, 2004 4:20:57 AM EST> <Error> <JDBC><<WLS Kernel>> <>
<BEA-001112> <Test "SELECT 1 FROM DUAL" set up for pool "CRCPool2" failed
with exception: "java.sql.SQLException: ORA-03113: end-of-file on
communication channel
".>
####<Mar 27, 2004 4:20:57 AM EST> <Info> <JDBC> <<WLS Kernel>> <>
<BEA-001128> <Connection for pool "CRCPool2" closed.>
---------- and then eventually this----------
####<Mar 28, 2004 4:33:11 AM EST> <Warning> <JDBC> <<WLS Kernel>> <>
<BEA-001129> <Received exception while creating connection for pool
"CRCPool2": ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve service name
>

Ayan wrote:
I am using wl server 8.1, oracle oci driver (oracle 9i client), on solaris.
When i create a connection pool using the oci driver, it connects, and i
test it, and the tests run fine.
The Application works for a few days. Then eventually after disuse, say over
the weekend, I get exceptions in the log (the message is at end of email).
This is because it gives me a sql exception saying it cannot resolve the
service name. The database is up and running, confirmed.
I tried testing the connection pool manually through the console, and it
failed with the service name exception. But it would connect fine when i
used sqlplus to connect to the databse, using the same service name.
Why does this deteriorate over time? Is there a specific test that would
prevent this from happening?
Once i restart the weblogic server, the connection pool connects fine. But
this is not a solution, since I can't be restarting the server all the time.
Any one got any ideas?
-AyanHi. Is there a firewall between the weblogic server and DBMS? There is
a problem with OCI losing connectivity to the DBMS. OCI may be keeping
a socket open as long as the process (weblogic) is running.
Joe
------------WEBLOGIC MANAGED SERVER LOG----------
####<Mar 27, 2004 4:20:57 AM EST> <Error> <JDBC><<WLS Kernel>> <>
<BEA-001112> <Test "SELECT 1 FROM DUAL" set up for pool "CRCPool2" failed
with exception: "java.sql.SQLException: ORA-03113: end-of-file on
communication channel
".>
####<Mar 27, 2004 4:20:57 AM EST> <Info> <JDBC> <<WLS Kernel>> <>
<BEA-001128> <Connection for pool "CRCPool2" closed.>
---------- and then eventually this----------
####<Mar 28, 2004 4:33:11 AM EST> <Warning> <JDBC> <<WLS Kernel>> <>
<BEA-001129> <Received exception while creating connection for pool
"CRCPool2": ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve service name

2nd Hard Drive stops responding

I have a Powermac G5 (Dual 2GHz) with Mac OS X 10.4.11 installed.
Last summer, I installed a second hard drive (Maxtor 500GB). It had been working fine until recently.
It’s as if, after a while, the Hard drive stops responding. I would be able to copy and read files from the hard drive. But later on, I double-click the icon to open it up, and I get the spinning beach ball. Or I would be burning a disk with files from the drive, and all of a sudden I get an error and the disc cannot be burned.
I have run DiskWarrior and TechTool on it, and all of the tests say that it is fine, but when I go to run a surface scan with TechTool, it will eventually hang and become unresponsive.
I have been able to salvage most of my data and then reformat, and I even was able to zero all the data on the drive, but after all that, it still has the same problems. Works fine for a bit, then stops responding.
If anyone can help me, I would really appreciate it.

Hi molglorf, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Does the Surface Scan still have problems?
Sounds like the HDD is a defective one, but Logic Board, Cables, etc. could case that too.

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.

2010 MBP 13" hard drive never spins down... ever.

Hi Folks,
I have searched - and even found others with a similar problem - but the threads died out without a solution, so....
I have a pretty new 2010 MBP 13" 2.4ghz with stock 250gb HDD (I think it's a Toshiba, IIRC). I noticed that the palm rests were vibrating constantly and there was noise that never went away, so I investigated. It is the hard drive under the right palm rest, which is constantly spinning. My hands feel like I just came in from mowing the lawn!
Now, I just came from ownership of a 2008 MB which also had the Core2Duo processor and which I used about the same. No new programs or new usage to speak of. Yet that hard drive was not spinning all the time; in fact, it was usually spun down and only spun up from time to time.
I do have the preference checked for "Put hard disk to sleep when possible" on both battery and AC. I downloaded iStat and I can't see any reason for it not to spin down. i.e. light use (or even with all programs closed), cool CPU, CPU 90% un-used, very few page outs (not sure which of this would affect HD though).
Still, it NEVER spins down.
It's not clicking or making any of the "I'm a hard drive about to die" type noises. It's just a constant spinning hum.
Can anyone help me with this? It's making me dislike what should be a nice upgrade from my MB and iBook. Of course I am still under warranty, but I'm 4 hours from the Apple store, and plus I just like to try to figure things out on my own if possible. Gaining understanding of how things work is a plus too
Thank you in advance for any help
Stixer
Message was edited by: Stixer

I don't know if anyone will click on this since I already marked it solved, but I will try it and then if not I'll start a new thread. Just don't want to clutter up the forum if I don't need to.
So anyway, it was stated earlier in this thread that it is not possible for the internal hard drive to spin down while the computer is turned on, and that the system pref for "put hard disk to sleep (i.e. spin down) when possible" check box could only really apply to external drives.
I'm no expert, so although I sure thought the drives in my previous Apple laptops were spun down most of the time (I'm a light user), I figured that okay, they must have just seemed like they were spinning down, and my new one must just be really noisy (even though the "noise" sounds just like my older drives did when they "spun up," but I guess they were just doing something else).
But okay, so this morning I was reading Anandtech's really great and thorough review of the new MBP's and in the maximum battery life test they did this:
+Light Web Browsing+
+Here we're simply listing to MP3s in iTunes on repeat while browsing through a series of webpages with no flash on them. Each page forwards on to the next in the series after 20 seconds.+
+The display is kept at 50% brightness, all screen savers are disabled, but *the hard drive is allowed to go to sleep if there's no disk activity*. The wireless connection is enabled and connected to a local access point less than 20 feet away. *This test represents the longest battery life you can achieve on the platform while doing minimal work. The results here are comparable to what you'd see typing a document in TextEdit or reading documents.*+
Doesn't this seem to indicate that my original understanding was correct, and that internal hard drives do have the ability to spin down under light use? It sounds like it to me. My typical usage is exactly what they are talking about above, and apparently their hard drive spins down during such use, unless I'm completely mis-understanding them. Mine also seemed to in my previous Apple laptops.
So now I'm feeling frustrated, as I hate having an issue that I can't get to the bottom of. Whether or how I can fix it or not is secondary, but I want to understand how it is supposed to work!
Thank you very much to anyone who reads through, and even more if you reply
Stixer

Hard drive is corrupt after i repair it

My hard drive reads corrupt after I repair it. I restart it, hit C, and open it with a startup disk, then repair and restart it. After a while, when I verify my disk, it says that is corrupt, AGAIN!!
Please help
I'm running a mac pro dual core 2 2.66 intel xeon processor, with 16GB of memory My operating system is 10.6,8

So you should have already made a couple backups, always have a spare bootable system drive, and in some cases zero it all - takes couple hours, and not use it except as spare extra backup.
Getting files off your drive now but don't use it,, install OS to a new drive (pull the old one in fact temporary) and you may want to use checksum on all file copies, and for any files not on backup sets try best you can and if you still need help, then turn to Data Rescue 3.
I would not use a DVD to do repairs, even if it is 10.6.0 or 10.6.3. I would use a clean small system drive with 10.6.8 (takes less than 30GB, even down to 16GB if careful) "emergency boot drive" used only for system maintenance and repairs.
And if you had Lion, you don't, but, I would use Recovery Mode AND have that also cloned to another drive, using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC).

IPod Photo refuses to sleep when hard drive is spinning

I am own an iPod Photo 60GB running the iPod Software 1.2 (for iPod with color display).
I cannot turn my iPod Photo 60GB off/put it into sleep mode while the hard drive is being accessed or spinning. This normally means that some music is playing, but it also can happen when a track is paused. This issue occurs for both ways to put an iPod into sleep mode: 1)"Sleep" from the menu, or 2)holding the play/pause button for a few seconds. Attempting either of these methods of turning my iPod off/putting it to sleep while the hard drive is spinning results in the iPod NOT going to sleep. When I select the "Sleep" item from the menu, I can hear the "click" sound, so I know the selection of that menu item is being detected by my iPod.
Generally speaking, this issue happens when I have just removed my iPod from being docked with my computer, and it starts playing a track because I hit the play button accidentally while disconnecting the iPod. Usally the first thing I want to do is put the iPod to sleep, because I am going somewhere and don't want to use that battery when I'm not listening to it.
My workaround: If I select a track at the end of an album/playlist, and then fast forward to the end of that track so that NO music/sound is playing on my iPod Photo 60GB, and the hard drive is not spinning, then I am able to use the "Sleep" menu item or the hold the play/pause button for a few seconds method. Also, if I let the track play for anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute or two until the the hard drive is not spinning anymore, then I am able to put my iPod to sleep. But shouldn't the sleep feature work immediately? None of Apple's documentation or TIL articles suggest otherwise.
This problem is not related to the hold switch being in the "hold" position, as I am trying all of this with the hold switch NOT in the "hold" position. Also, it is not related to the battery power being low, as it happens with a full charge.
I have read threads with a similar issue to mine, however the clarification needs to be made that this "bug", as I'll call it, only occurs when the hard drive is spinning/being accessed. Many people have mentioned troubles with putting their iPod to sleep while listening to a Podcast. This makes sense because some Podcasts are too large to fit into the iPod's RAM cache, and so the hard drive is accessing the Podcast through it's entire length. None of these threads have any useful input from Apple Computer support other than the suggestion of resetting the iPod or restoring the iPod's software. In both cases, the suggested solution DOES NOT fix the problem permanently.
With the hopes that because ALL iPods that Apple sells currently will most likely have this problem, by starting a "new", more detailed thread on this issue, perhaps Apple will get this message to a higher level and actually do something about it.
I would highly suggest if you have an iPod Photo (any size) or one of the "new" color iPod's, that you try seeing if you can put your iPod to sleep when your hard drive is being accessed, and if not - Please Post on this Thread. The more posts that come up on a thread, the more likely that someone with Apple will notice.
Thanks for reading...

To elaborate more on what Rob said. Since the iPod is a hard drive based device(similar to your computer) the disc inside spins and there is a needle to read the data.
What you are suggusting would be like yanking the power cord out of your computer in mid install of something, the chance of data lose is there and if happened enough bad sectors can arise. Should you do that? No, Would you do it? In most cases not.
A bad sector would in most causes make the ipod freeze when accessing it or make it fail its disk check and requiring replacement.

My macbook hard drive stopped working and I loaded another hard drive and can access time capsule but it doesn't show any of my old files and I don't understand why

My 7 year old macbook hard drive stopped working and I put in another hard drive but when I went to restore my information from airport time capsule it only shows today and nothing older. Help?

Did you do a TM backup after you installed the disk? It may write over the previous backup.. but it should actually start a new one.
Read the info about using migration.. see http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
Or the Mac is probably looking at the backup as from a different computer.
See the details of how to use TM to restore to a different Mac.
Q17 here. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
I would read through 14-17 carefully.
You should be able to do a full recovery of the TM backup to a USB drive plugged into the computer.

T400 DVD drive stops spinning

I just had to install my third hard drive in this lemon of a computer. I'm running XP SP3 with all current updates. The bios and dvd drivers that were installed by Thinkvantage Productivity Center are newer than what are listed on the Lenovo updates page. I had no problem with the DVD drive with the old hard drive and its drivers.
Now I try to reinstall my software from the original CDs and the drive stops spinning within a minute of starting the install. Setup.exe process hangs and System log gets a message from Service Control Manager that reads "The IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service service entered the stopped state." I can start the service manually but it reenters the stopped state every time I try the install from CD again.
Current bios 7UET89WW (3.19) date
Model HL-DT-ST RW/DVD MU10N combo CD/DVD driver seen in Device Manager is 5.1.2535.0 date 7/1/2001. No newer driver is found when I choose update from Device Manager or when I use ThinkPad SATA Optical Disc Drive Firmware Update Utility. I have uninstalled the device and let it reinstall on its own and get the same driver.
However, when I launch Thinkvantage Productivity Center and go to Advanced System Info, under Components/CD-ROM the driver is version 5.1.2600.5512 date 4/13/2008. The drive does not show up under Problem Devices and tests fine.
Any suggestions how to get my optical drive back to functioning? I've lost 3 days of work from this whole episode.
tia

Do you mean test it to see if it will burn data or boot from a Linux distro to look more closely at the drive? I have knoppix on DVD but I could use another computer to burn linux live if that has some particularly good tools.
I haven't tried to burn anything to a DVD using the drive. I was able to get a few photos copied off a CDROM onto the hard drive before it spun down and imapi stopped itself.
thanks

MBA supposed to be sleeping but hard drive is spinning.

Help. This has happened to me more than 5 times so I know this is not a fluke:
When I leave my office, i put my MacBook Air to sleep and put it in my briefcase. When I arrive home (an hour later) my MBA is super hot and sounds like the hard drive is spinning. It is literally overheating. It's as if it woke up in my briefcase and the hard drive starts to spin. This makes no sense as i quit all the applications and make sure the shell is actually closed.
This does not happen EVERY time but has now happened enough that i know it is not a fluke. The only way to stop the hard drive from spinning is to hold the power button down until the computer just shuts down. Has anyone else had this issue? Sometimes the computer is so hot that i actually smell "burning". Clearly if i didn't notice it for 2 or 3 hours the MBA would just "melt down".
Any ideas?

HI and welcome to Apple Discussions...
"smell burning" isn't good obviously.
Try Resetting the System Management Controller
If that doesn't make a difference, definitely take it to an Apple store or Apple certified repair provider.
Make sure all you don't have any applications running when you put the MB Air to sleep.
Carolyn

X121e touch pad buttons stop working after a while

Hello everyone,
I have a lenovo thinkpad x121e.
The buttons above the touchpad (for right and left clicking) and also the trackpoint stop working after a while (about 45 min). Although the touchpad itself works without problems.
If I reboot the operating system (Windows 7, 64-bit version) everything works fine for a while and then the buttons and trackpoint won't respond again.
It is always the same routine. Rebooting windows, everything alright, stop working, ...
I am using the newest driver version and de- & reinstalling of UltraNav haven't solved the problem.
Has anyone an idea what causes my problems with the touch pad buttons and how to solve it? (I guess it's not a hardware problem.)
Many thanks in advance.

Hi again, li-lup
I would recommend trying to use the standard Synaptics driver found here. Synaptics is the company that develops the UltraNav software, so there should be no loss of compatibility/features. I have witnessed several cases where this driver has helped others with mouse issues, so it may help yours as well.
The first thing you will need to do is to remove the UltraNav driver from the system. To do this, open the Start menu and type Device Manager into the Search box, and then press Enter. Once here, double click on Mouse and other pointing devices, and then right-click on the UltraNav device. Naviage to the Driver tab and select Uninstall... from the bottom of the window. Follow the prompts to uninstall and then restart when prompted by Windows. Windows should install a generic driver that will allow you to use the TouchPad when downloading the Synaptics driver.
Hope it helps,
Adam
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HT1751 My win8 pc hard drive failed. After the hard drive was replaced, I copied iTunes Media backupfiles from external hard drive (Karen's Replicator was used). ITunes does not recognize the back up files - help! (it does show cloud & recently burned m

My win8 pc hard drive failed. After the hard drive was replaced, I copied iTunes Media backupfiles from external hard drive (Karen's Replicator backup software was used). ITunes does not recognize these back up files even though the location is the same as cloud & recently burned music that does show- help! The backup files consist of 34,000+ songs; almost all burned from my own CD collection. I do have most of the songs on an ipod classic but hesitate to try to restore from that. Can someone tell me how to get these 34,000 songs to show up in iTunes? Thanks!!

This diagram shows how a typical iTunes library ought to be set out (click on it to enlarge)
The red outline highlights the media folder and its contents, the various subfolders are only created if that kind of content is in your library. The right-hand side shows the files that should be found in the iTunes library folder; sentinel is normally hidden so may not be visible. The core of your iTunes library is the file iTunes Library.itl, you need to restore this, the other library files and the Album Artwork folder, as well as the media folder, to restore your library.
tt2

I just had a new hard drive installed. After loading everything back on my computer from external drive, i came to the "select wireless network screen. I've misplaced the WEP password for my internet. Is there anyway to find it on another computer?

i just had a new hard drive installed. After loading everything back on my computer from external drive, i came to the "select wireless network screen. I've misplaced the WEP password for my internet. Is there anyway to find it on another computer?

Maybe. What kind of other computer are you talking about? What operating system is it running? What kind of wireless router are you using?
Your best bet may be to just reset the router and set it up again.
Just so you know, WEP is a very old security system for wireless and is considered insecure. If you have it available, use WPA2.

Hard drive stop spinning after a while

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