Hard drives going to sleep

I am working on a documentary using Final Cut 5.0.4, on a quad with 2.5 gigs of RAM, and needless to say there is a lot of footage... All the footage is stored on 4 Lacie drives. I've experineced a freeze while watching the footage in the sequence as the drives wake from sleeping... Is there a way to prevent them from falling asleep so as not to have this lag in view the footage from drive to drive..?
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

To force your drives to never sleep:
Launch the Terminal application (Applications>Utilities>Terminal) and type:
sudo pmset spindown X
type your password when it asks for it.
X=the number of minutes that you want till your drive spins down.
0 (zero) is never
And note that this is a more 'controlled' way of checking "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible" than in system preferences/energy saver/sleep In there, checked means 10 minutes and unchecked means 180 minutes (not never).
good luck.
x

Similar Messages

When my screen goes to sleep and then the hard drive goes to sleep why won't the screen wake up?

I can repeat this 100% of the time. If I let the screen go to sleep (or I manually put it to sleep) and I shut the computer so the hard drive goes to sleep (or if the hard drive simply goes to sleep on the timer), when I open the Macbook Pro the screen will not wake up, although I think the hard drive does as the back light on the keyboard turns on. Any ideas on why this is happening. My computer is 4 weeks old...a bit frustrating. The best answer I have gotten is get a new one for Apple...or completely re-install the OS.
Jared

The reason why it's happening is not obvious and can't be determined without more information. The fact that you can reproduce the problem makes it a lot more tractable.
As a first step, boot in safe mode (shift key down at startup.) Can you reproduce the problem now? If so, note the time, then reboot as usual (not in safe mode) and look in the system log for error messages at the time the screen failed to wake up.

Airport Extreme Hard Drive Going to Sleep

Hi,
I have recently purchased an Airport Extreme along with a 3tb WD My Book Essential hard drive and all was going swimmingly (and I was wirelessly backing up using time machine) up until the other day. Annoyingly the hard drive is going to sleep after an hour or so of inactivity and cannot be spun up again without being restarted at the hard drive itself instead of when the network needs it.
Is there any way of spinning the hard drive up over the network automatically when it wants to back up or I want to find a file on the hard drive? Do I need to buy a USB hub? Or would another solution work?
Thanks,
Henry

It sounds like the drive isn't working. I suggest you return it.

Hard drive going to sleep

I have an older iMac G3 running 10.3.9. I have the power saver settings set to sleep the computer after an hour. I do NOT have the only spin down hard drive check box checked. I also have the screen saver set to come on after 20 minutes. After the screen saver comes on within a few minutes I will hear the hard drive spin down. The screen saver is still acive...then it spins back up for a few and then back down again. Any idea why this is happening?
Thanx...Jon

Hi,
Your question made me think. So I checked mine and low and behold, right now my drive is wound-down, not spinning.
So, to check out what would make it run *all the time* I played with some settings. Found that in the "system Preferences" under "energy saver", going into options and found 3 setting for the processor. Mine was on "automatic". Putting it on High changed the drive to run. To reduced was like Auto.
So, the lil Mac has a lot of Magic build into it, not only for what we do, but also to save on ware-and-tear of it's accessories. Once loaded with what one normally does and uses, the drive rests (why spin and do nothing?). I do not know how much memory you have, but I have 1.5 gig... that moves faster then a drive, since under normal use it's about 300-400 meg. That leaves time for the drive to start and receive in the background... while I still work in the front. Or wait till I shutdown or put it to sleep.
Another intersting item is the system log under the Apple menu, in "About this Mac". If you read some of that, you come out with how this system thinks. It's amazing!!!!
Enjoy...

Hard drive goes to sleep in 2 minutes when hooked up to my Airport Extreme?

I have a usb hard drive hooked up to my airport extreme as a network drive and it works great, I use it for all my movies and music and all my computers on my network can access the drive, but if I am not accessing a file it goes to sleep really quickly and then when I do want to access a file I haft to wait for the drive to spin up again. As long as a video or music is playing off it it continues to run as you would expect, just wondered if any one knows why it goes to sleep so quickly and is there away to extend the sleep time.
Thanks

I don't know the exact reason but I've tried different externals and internal drive in the TC or usb attached to TC or the Extreme and some drives don't sleep and its annoying that these would use unneccassary power.

OS X freezes when hard drive goes to sleep

So i have been virtually PC free for about a year now and I am absolutely loving it. I love it so much I use my 12 inch iBook all of the time. It is run constantly as I am an open source developer and I do a lot of coding.
Anyways, about 2 weeks ago my mac started to freeze whenever I would walk away from it for a few moments. This is not the kernle panic screen that i am talking about. I mean that os x just froze. I could not do anything. Nothing responded. It never happened while I was at my computer just when I walked away for a few moments. It would happen at least 3-4 times a day.
I got fed up trying to get it to work so I did a backup and reinstalled everything. It was about time for me to reorganize anyways so this was good. I thoughtmy problems were over until it started freezing again. I sat down at though of what could be making it freeze. The only thing that my mac does when I walk away is to put the hd to sleep. So i turned that setting off in the energy saver and my mac has not froze for the past couple of days.
What I am wondering is...
Has anyone else had this problem? If so what can i do to get it fixed? Is it a hardware problem, ie I need to get my harddrive replaced, or is it an os x problem?
Thanks for any help
Craig

Good thing you turned that setting off. Though it saves energy (and I'm quite the environmentalist) putting the HDD to sleep actually is very hard on it and wears it out much faster because it is constantly starting and stopping. I found this program called Drive Genius that does a pretty good job of diagnosing Hard drive problems. I would suggest you pick up a copy and run some diagnostic test, or maybe try running the apple hardware test off of the Tiger Boot CD.

External Hard Drives going to sleep.

Is there a way to set an external drive to NEVER sleep. I have several externals (Lacies and Seagates running USB2.0) and they go to sleep if not accessed regularly.
Which is a problem with a documentary timeline as if I'm in a viewing it freezes when I get to a part later on in the TL that has gone to sleep....for a viewing to go smoothly I have to export a QT, which quite frankly is a pain.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Susan.

To force your drives to never sleep:
Launch the Terminal application (Applications>Utilities>Terminal) and type:
sudo pmset spindown X
type your password when it asks for it.
X=the number of minutes that you want till your drive spins down.
0 (zero) is never
And note that this is a more 'controlled' way of checking "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible" than in system preferences/energy saver/sleep In there, checked means 10 minutes and unchecked means 180 minutes (not never).
More info on using pmset here:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/pmset.1. html
And this text was found here
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html
x

Network hard drive going to sleep?

A small question here! Is a network drives plug into the Airport is going to sleep if it's not used? Is there a setup somewhere where I can set the sleeping time for that network drive?
Thanks you!
Nicolas

It sounds like the drive isn't working. I suggest you return it.

Hard Drive Goes To Sleep - Always

The hard drive in my Mac Pro spins down every few minutes. I am constantly interrupted when working on it to wait for the hard drive to spin up. I do mean constantly.
This is not an Energy Saver control panel setting. Everything is set to never sleep, no how, no way. Still the HD sleeps every few minutes.
Is there a way in the Terminal to reset the hard drive's setting directly or some utility to set the drive to never spin down? Or even to have it only spin down when the control panel calls for it to spin down?
Thanks

I have this issue too. I own two identical MacPro units running 10.4.10. They are set for the CPU to sleep after 1 hr, display after 15 mins. The "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" option in Energy Saver is OFF.
Despite the latter, after a certain length of time (not much more than 15mins), at least one hard drive(s) spin down (one machine has 3 drives, the other 2), stopping with a click (presumably head-locking). A few minutes later they do it again, adn so on indefinitely.
I am not disturbed by this so much as worrying that the drive(s) will suffer more wear by being spun up and down every few minutes than if they stayed either on or off. I would therefore like them to stay in one state or the other, and I feel that this should be determined by the Energy Saver setting of "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible", which is currently apparently IGNORED. ie this appears to be a bug.
The response I get on one machine to the instruction "pmset -g" is :
Active Profiles:
AC Power -1*
Currently in use:
disksleep 180
hibernatemode 0
displaysleep 15
powerbutton 1
womp 1
sleep 60
autorestart 0
hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage
Hope this helps.
Has this been reported as a bug?
Drive in Bay 1 is the original WD2500JS (Macintosh HD)
Drive in Bay 2 is a third-party ST3500641AS
I can't tell you which one(s) I hear spinning down. It is rather hard to tell.
Thanks,
--Richard E

Is my hard drive going bad?

What are some of the signs of a hard drive going bad?
Lately my computer has been acting funny. Every few seconds I hear noises like my computer is trying to do something but then it winds down then stops. It's sounds like it could be the hard drive, but I'm not sure. It even does this when the computer is in sleep mode. I'm not sure what else to do. I've ran several Utillity programs such as Tech Tool Pro and Disk Warrior. I've also ran Disk Utility. While it's doing this it sometimes causes a lag (spinning beach ball) in some of the programs I'm using.
Does it sound like I may need to buy a new hard drive? If so, any suggestions would be much appreciated. Right now I have a 80gig hard drive.
thanks,
Tim

Hello again Tim,
Maybe your machine is not in as bad shape as you are trying not to think about. You have had no errors reported by the hardware test or Tech Tool. Chances are you have a corrupted system cache, internet cache and a couple of .plist (preference) files, which common and not difficult to cure.
First thing to do is to install and run a cache cleaner. I've attached the link to Onyx. After you've installed and opened Onyx select the cleaning button. Then select system cache and internet cache and run it.
You should also delete the preference files for Mail and for Safari and any other apps that seem to hang. The easiest way to find them is by typing the app's name into the search box of a Finder window and delete the .plist files. You can delete any of these files for slow apps without danger of removing important files - anything with .plist is OK. I've also attached a link to free app that checks all your system preference files. It may pick up on the corruption without eliminating them one by one.
Don't pull the RAM yet! There's still a few more tricks to try.
Onyx - http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html
Preferential treatment - http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22790

How to prevent the hard drive to go sleeping ?

My 20" core 2 duo imac is now running 10.4.8, on the standard 250Gb hd (from seagate : model ST3250824AS).
I remarked that after a few minutes of idling, it goes to sleep (I can easily hear it spinning down... and up when I need it or by itself a few moments later, with the spinning ball for a few seconds...)
I find this behaviour a bit stupid on a desktop computer and I would like to prevent it... I found something on the energy panel (preferences) and I unchecked the case allowing the harddrive to go to sleep as soon as possible.
No change.
I played with the SpindownHD applet (provided with the CHUD from developer tools) and the display is weird : it displays that Disks sleep after 180 minutes idle (which is perfect...) except that when the harddrive is idling, the display is changed to <<Disks sleep after 1 minutes idle>> and indeed the harddrive goes sleeping... The display then goes back to <<after 180 minutes idle>>...
Not a big problem, but weird, and, IMHO, plain stupid behaviour for a desktop harddrive, all the more so than I guess it will make the harddrive wear out more quickly...
Did I miss something obvious ?
phjo

This presumes that the hard drive itself doesn't have
a built-in sleep control that's independent and
unchangeable. However, even drives that do usually
have a sleep time of at least 15 minutes. That
doesn't sound like the case for your drive from what
you've posted.
It might well be that, in the sense that I'm not that sure that the delay after which the drive goes to sleep is less than 15 minutes. (Not everything done on the computer involves disk access, so when the hard drive went to sleep, it might have been idling for longer than what I thought.)
That being said, on seagate web site, the documentation about this model states that power management should be accessible through the operating system setup, so it looks like nothing is unchangeable...
Maybe power management in tiger does not comply completely with this drive specific controls... yet... Quoting the documentation : <<the standby timer delay is established using a Standby or Idle command.>>
but it appears that when the drive enters Idle status, for the internal seagate hard drive as well as the external firewall (when plugged in) the delay that is applied is 1 minute...
phjo

Start up drive goes to sleep, won't wake up

I added a second internal drive (SATA) Maxtor 6V250F0 250gb and have made it my start up drive. The problem is, every now and then the drive goes into sleep mode. (The computer itself has not gone to sleep. As often as not, I simply reading a website or whatever.) This leads to spinning beach ball city as applications stop responding. The only way to recover is to do a hard shut down using the power button and restart.
I have tried unchecking "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" in the Energy Saver control panel, but it still happens.
Possibly related: If I put the machine to sleep manually, when I wake it up, the start up drive acts as if it is read-only. Again, only a restart can correct it.
Also possibly related: The old start up drive can not be unmounted either in the Finder or in Disk Utility. As a result, I can't erase it with Disk Utility. (I realize I could probably get around this by starting up from the Tiger DVD, but I'm more concerned about the new start up drive problems.)

Having the same problem. 74GB raptor boot drive becomes read only after idle

IMac hard drive refuses to sleep

Hi
I have spent most of the morning trying - and failing - to persuade my late 2012 2.7ghz 21.5" iMac to sleep correctly. Running Yosemite 10.10.1, entering sleep mode turns off the display but the hard drive continues to whirr away continuously. I have tried the following: SMC reset, NVRAM reset, verify and repair disc permissions, creating a guest account and logging into that (problem still there), using Activity Monitor to close down all system and application activity, checking all energy saving and bluetooth settings, turning off file sharing, turning off iCloud drive, powering up in safe mode.
Nothing seems to work. If there's anyone with an idea - or suggestions of something I've missed - then I would be hugely grateful!
Many thanks in advance.

Problem description:
Hard drive won’t sleep
EtreCheck version: 2.1.5 (108)
Report generated 26 December 2014 15:30:49 GMT
Click the [Support] links for help with non-Apple products.
Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.
Click the [Adware] links for help removing adware.
Hardware Information: ℹ️
iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012) (Verified)
iMac - model: iMac13,1
1 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 4-core
8 GB RAM Upgradeable
BANK 0/DIMM0
4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok
BANK 1/DIMM0
4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok
Bluetooth: Good - Handoff/Airdrop2 supported
Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Video Information: ℹ️
NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M - VRAM: 512 MB
iMac 1920 x 1080
System Software: ℹ️
OS X 10.10.1 (14B25) - Uptime: 0:13:9
Disk Information: ℹ️
APPLE HDD HTSdisk0 : (1 TB)
EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB
Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / : 999.35 GB (544.48 GB free)
Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB
USB Information: ℹ️
Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)
Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub
Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Thunderbolt Information: ℹ️
Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus
Gatekeeper: ℹ️
Mac App Store and identified developers
Kernel Extensions: ℹ️
/System/Library/Extensions
[not loaded] com.symantec.kext.symdc (1.6) [Support]
[not loaded] com.tomtom.driver.UsbEthernetGadget (1.0.0d1) [Support]
Startup Items: ℹ️
HP Trap Monitor: Path: /Library/StartupItems/HP Trap Monitor
NortonAutoProtect: Path: /Library/StartupItems/NortonAutoProtect
NortonMissedTasks: Path: /Library/StartupItems/NortonMissedTasks
NUMCompatibilityCheck: Path: /Library/StartupItems/NUMCompatibilityCheck
SymDCInit: Path: /Library/StartupItems/SymDCInit
TrackDelete: Path: /Library/StartupItems/TrackDelete
VolumeAssist: Path: /Library/StartupItems/VolumeAssist
Startup items are obsolete in OS X Yosemite
Launch Daemons: ℹ️
[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist [Support]
User Launch Agents: ℹ️
[invalid?] com.amazon.cloud-player.plist [Support]
[running] com.amazon.music.plist [Support]
[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist [Support]
[running] com.spotify.webhelper.plist [Support]
User Login Items: ℹ️
iTunesHelper Application (/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app)
Internet Plug-ins: ℹ️
Google Earth Web Plug-in: Version: 6.1 [Support]
Default Browser: Version: 600 - SDK 10.10
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: Version: 2.3.0.14 [Support]
npBTEmailConfig: Version: 1.0 [Support]
OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin: Version: 12.3.6 [Support]
Silverlight: Version: 5.1.20913.0 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 16.0.0.235 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
AmazonMP3DownloaderPlugin101749: Version: AmazonMP3DownloaderPlugin 1.0.17 - SDK 10.4 [Support]
Flash Player: Version: 16.0.0.235 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 6.0
QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
DirectorShockwave: Version: 12.1.1r151 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
Safari Extensions: ℹ️
AllMyTube [Installed]
Add To Amazon Wish List [Installed]
3rd Party Preference Panes: ℹ️
Flash Player [Support]
Flip4Mac WMV [Support]
StuffIt AVR [Support]
Time Machine: ℹ️
Skip System Files: NO
Mobile backups: OFF
Auto backup: YES
Volumes being backed up:
Macintosh HD: Disk size: 999.35 GB Disk used: 454.87 GB
Destinations:
Untitled [Local]
Total size: 499.06 GB
Total number of backups: 4
Oldest backup: 2014-09-17 00:39:05 +0000
Last backup: 2014-09-17 08:33:29 +0000
Size of backup disk: Too small
Backup size 499.06 GB < (Disk used 454.87 GB X 3)
Top Processes by CPU: ℹ️
      6% WindowServer
      2% com.apple.WebKit.WebContent
      0% Dock
      0% hidd
      0% fontd
Top Processes by Memory: ℹ️
283 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent
137 MB mds_stores
137 MB Safari
103 MB WindowServer
86 MB CalendarAgent
Virtual Memory Information: ℹ️
3.16 GB Free RAM
3.65 GB Active RAM
885 MB Inactive RAM
882 MB Wired RAM
2.07 GB Page-ins
0 B Page-outs
Diagnostics Information: ℹ️
Dec 26, 2014, 03:18:13 PM Self test - passed
Dec 24, 2014, 12:36:13 PM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Aperture_2014-12-24-123613_[redacted].hang
Dec 24, 2014, 12:15:37 PM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/locationd_2014-12-24-121537_[redacted].crash
Dec 24, 2014, 11:38:37 AM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/locationd_2014-12-24-113837_[redacted].crash
Dec 24, 2014, 10:47:47 AM /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/FaceTime_2014-12-24-104747_[re dacted].crash
Dec 24, 2014, 10:45:57 AM /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/FaceTime_2014-12-24-104557_[re dacted].crash
Dec 24, 2014, 10:45:18 AM /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/FaceTime_2014-12-24-104518_[re dacted].crash
Dec 24, 2014, 09:21:06 AM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Google Drive_2014-12-24-092106_[redacted].crash
Dec 24, 2014, 09:17:21 AM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Google Drive_2014-12-24-091721_[redacted].crash

ESATA - No Hotswap - Connected drives going to sleep - BSOD

Hello Forum,
I have a brand new HP Envy 700-215xt, running Windows 7 Home Premium.
I purchased an eSATA bracket so I could hotswap two external drives. DRIVE 1 is a 1TB SAMSUNG drive in an enclosure by Acomdata. DRIVE 2 is a Hitachi 250 GB laptop drive in a simple no-name enclosure.
*** PROBLEM #1 ***
Both drives show up fine in Windows if they are attached and powered on before booting up. Neither of the drives appear at all when powered up after the computer is already booted. Going into device manager and selecting "Scan hardware for changes does nothing. The only way to make the drive available to the OS is to reboot the computer. This is very disappointing. I thought eSATA was supposed to be hotswappable.
Since both drives worked exactly as expected on my Win XP machine, I suspect this has to do with the motherboard or BIOS settings. Please help me get this feature working.
*** PROBLEM #2 ***
Even when the drives are recognized by the OS, after a few minutes of inactivity, the SAMSUNG drive "goes to sleep". I can actually hear it spin down. When I try and and access the files through the explorer or any other application, I hear the drive spin up and I have to wait on order of 15-20 seconds for the drive to wake back up.
I have even gotten a few BSODs, especially when I try to shut down the computer while the Samsung drive is asleep. I have to do something to wake up the drive before I can shut down.
Where are the settings for me to disable this annoying behavior?
Thanks for your help,
-Steve
This question was solved.
View Solution.

eSATA on HP PC's depends on what its plugged into.
If you have an external PCIe card, this will hotswap if the card allows it. There is nothing within the motherboard to stop that, its an external controller and will function as such.
If your external esata card is simply a port with a cable going to one of your sata ports then you will need to have it going to either a port on the motherboard labelled as esata, or a sata port that allows you to select internal or external in the bios.
Not all HP's are very forgiving in this regard. I have an Elite 8200 CMT at work and that has one esata port. We have an external caddy in it with two bays, but we can only use one due to the limitations of this board. And the sata ports on this board can't be selected as external.

Lacie 500GB Porsche USB 2.0 external hard drive will not sleep

Hi there,
I bought a Lacie 500GB Porsche USB 2.0 external hard drive that shipped along with my new iMac. I have noticed that even though I check to "put hard drives to sleep" when not in use under system preferences, this hard drive will never sleep. I have to eject it and then turn the hard drive off. Anyone know how to fix it or know if it is a Leopard or Lacie issue that might be fixed with a driver or firmware update?

Hi,
I just got the same drive and was wondering the same thing. I inquired with LaCie about it and here is the response that the support people gave me:
"That particular unit does not sleep. We changed the bridge to the newer controller, which is faster and better for data transfer, but that feature was dropped from the design. I'm sorry."
Hope this helps.

Hard drives going to sleep

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for