How to make hard hard drive turn off?

How do i turn off hard drives when they are not mounted?

The program you're looking for is hdparm. Check the man page & read the section on the -S option. Do not set the timeout too low or your drive may die sooner than expected. A hard drive can only spin up/down so many times.

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Hard drives turning off

I have a 2 hard drive RAID set up with identical Iomega hard drives. They are both connected to a FireWire 400 hub which goes into my computer (iMac G5.) Whenever I'm doing something hard drive-intensive (exporting video from FCP, using Compressor with files from RAID, importing video to RAID scratch disk) one or both of the hard drives turns off. The blue light goes out but the drive keeps spinning. Sometimes the icon stays on the desktop, sometimes I get the Device Removal error message.
But here's the strange thing. If I plug in and turn on some other FireWire device (camcorder, A-D converter box) the blue light comes back on and the RAID starts working again.
This happens to both the drives, but usually not both at once, so I don't think the drives are bad. Would undoing the RAID solve this problem? I would hate to have to do that though because I don't believe there's away to do that without erasing the drives right? I have absolutely no idea on this one.

I have actually been running with the "Put the hard disks to sleep whenever possible" option off since before I got the drives, but they turn off anyway. I don't think it's that anyway, because 1) The option has been on for a few days and the hard drives stop spinning, but the light stays on when they are sleeping, and 2) The drive(s) only turn off (light off, disk spinning) when there is activity like copying or writing files happening. If they were sleeping it would (or should) only happen when they aren't being used. After I turned on the "Put the hard disks to sleep whenever possible" option, the drives sleep and wake up ok, but the lights are always on except when they are spinning up.

Why External Hard Drives turn off Automatically?

Im using a Mac Pro and I having that problem and I want to know why.
Any hints I'll appreciate...
Robert

By off do you mean "sleep"? (drive spinning down after a while) or do you mean - off as in completely off? (power down)
If its the second - then you'll have to take a look at the drive as there might be something wrong with it.
If its sleeping - spinning down, then it depends on the controller and interface. Most enclosures allows spinning down the drives after a certain amount of time. When the drive is connected by USB etc then the controller has the responsibility and there is nothing you can do about it... If its connected via eSATA and your controller allows you to control the spinning (not all do) then you can go to your system preferences and select your energy settings... there you should have a box that allows you to put your drives to sleep when possible. But it will do all of them - not just the external ones.
Some controllers (again SATA of some sort) allows you to individually set external drives to sleep. The RocketRAID does that...
But again - if the external drive is USB etc... then nothing you can do to prevent the spinning down unless you write or read from the drive every 10 minutes or so...

Hard Drive Turning Itself Off

Hey,
Recently my Toshiba Netbook NB505-N508BL hard drive would turn itself off and then after a few seconds, it would turn itself on and sometimes this happens right after another, sometimes a few minutes later. I turned the "turn hard drive off after X minutes" option off in windows 7, but it is still doing the turning off then on thing. When the hard drive is off, I can still surf the web and play game or listen to music, but when it's about to turn on, my screen would freeze for about 1 sec. I used the check for disk error thing, but it didn't find anything.
So I used an external optical drive and formatted the hard drive and did a fresh install of windows 7. At first I thought the problem was gone, but on the 2nd day, the hard drive started turning itself off and on again. I am not sure if there's a problem with any of my netbook devices or not, but they are all functional. My suspicion is that it's about to die, so I downloaded a few disk diagnostic programs. I ran the quick and full test, both turned out "pass". I am currently out of ideas and couldn't find anyone with the same problem online.
I have back ups of my files, so I'm not that worried. I am just really annoyed by that sound as if the system would shut down any minute. Anyone have any solution to this?
Thanks a lot!

LMAO, should have known not to ask in here XD

How to find hard drives connected to router on my mac

how to find hard drives connected to router on my mac

Hello Thatguy1233,
It sounds like you have a Time Machine back up of your computer that you would like to restore. You may be able to use the following article to restore that backup:
OS X Lion: Recover your entire system
http://support.apple.com/kb/ph4351
Make sure your Time Machine backup disk is connected and turned on. If your backup disk is on a network, make sure your computer is on the same network.
Choose Apple menu > Restart, and then hold down the Command (⌘) and R keys while the computer restarts.
Select “Restore from a Time Machine Backup,” and then click Continue.
Depending on your type of backup disk, do one of the following:
If you use an external disk, select it and click Continue.
If you use a Time Capsule, choose your AirPort network from the AirPort menu on the right side of the menu bar, and then select your Time Capsule and click “Connect to Remote Disk.”
If you use a network disk, select it and click “Connect to Remote Disk.”
If necessary, enter the name and password you use to connect to your backup disk, and then click Connect.
Select the date and time of the backup you want to restore, and then follow the onscreen instructions.
After you restore your system from a Time Machine backup, Time Machine may perform a full backup at the next scheduled backup time. This is normal. Time Machine resumes incremental backups after the full backup is completed.
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Take care,
Sterling

How to install hard drive into mac pro

how to install hard drive into mac pro

I recently bought a new 2TB internal sata drive for my Macpro.
The installation was easy, but I'm not sure what to do next.
For one, should I partition the drive?
My purpose for buying the drive was to use it as my go to drive for Parallels. I used to run my music studio on Windows based machines, and my older project files require a windows OS to recover. I installed Parallels so I can have my studio running Mac and Windows programs which will enable me to access my old project files and take them into my newer Protools system.
So now, I've installed my new hard drive, but I'm not sure if I should partition it....And!? I'm not sure how to designate that drive for my virtual pc on Parallels. I was able to allocate enough disk space to parallels in order to load my music software, but at this point, I'm not sure if I've just promised it disk space from my original partitioned drive (which only has about 350 GB left on it).
I would love to be able to make one internal drive available for Parallels, and the other available for the rest of my OSX. When I use Parallels, I still would like to save some extra information on the 2TB drive as well from my dekstop running OSX.
I hope this makes sense! Your help is much appreciated!

How come my hard drive is not showing up on the desktop?

How come my hard drive is not showing up on the desktop?

Those are preferences you speify from INSIDE The Finder:
Finder > Preferences:

How do I find how large my Hard Drive is? Please help!

Recently been getting messages saying that my startup disk is full. And I'm thinking about getting a Time Capsule. But the thing is, I can't find out how big my hard drive is. I clicked the apple, then About this mac, and I could only find "Memory", which was only 1 GB. I know that can't be it, because my iTunes is over 90 GB. But I can't find the hard drive. Either I'm blind, or it's not there.
Please help
Thanks

Click more info in the about this mac pop up. Then under Serial-ATA. This will give you the size.
You can also click on your drive in finder and choose Get Info. This will also let you see the size.

How to replace hard drive in macbook pro?

How to replace hard drive in macbook pro?

Hi S,
If you have the newer unibody style, it's very easy. If it's one of the earlier models, it's considerably more difficult. Go to Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info > Hardware and find your Model Identifier. Then go to ifixit.com, or powerbookmedic.com or macsales.com or youtube or others and there are illustrated, detailed directions. Good luck to you and post back if you have further questions.

How to wipe hard drive bc selling computer and want all passwords/personal info gone? etc

how to wipe hard drive bc selling computer and want all passwords/personal info gone?

You need to boot the computer from another source, e.g. a CD or an external drive. Then run Disk Utility, select the drive you want cleaned up, and run Erase. Note the security options: "write zeroes" will erase the drive completely.

Can I install onto an external hard drive + run off it?

Can I install onto an external hard drive + run off it?
If possible, will the system run at the *same* speed as the built in hard drive?
ALSO: Am I correct in saying that if I replace my current hard drive with an SSD one?
If so: that *****
Thanks
Omar

OS X doesn't matter what disk you boot from, as long as it can be formatted properly in Disk Utility. You can boot from a USB stick drive if it's big enough.
Thunderbolt would be the fastest, the drive would be the limiting factor there. You can find Thunderbolt drives like these at stores like macsales.com. But USB 3 might also feel fast enough.
If you have boot systems installed on many drives connected to your Mac, the way you tell the Mac which one to use is to hold down the Option key at startup. This will present icons of all the connected drives you can boot from, then you just pick one and go.

How to check hard drive health

My mac pro starts up and shuts down very slow. Anyone know how to check hard drive health?

Normally if you have a hard drive problem it manifests itself with delays, periodic locks-ups, I/O errors, etc.during notrmal use, not just start ups and slow downs.
Never the less, you asked how you check the health of a drive, so I'll answer.
You can check the SMART status of your drive with Disk Utility or a free tool like smartctl in the smartmontools package. Disk Utility will typically report the SMART status of your drive as "verified" or a message associated with a type of failure right in the Disk Utility window. SMART status will be reported on most internal drives and Thunderbolt drives. More elaborate SMART information can often be obtained with newer OS versions by clicking on the "info" button. SMART is a reporting technology and will only report on errors after they occur. Many in the industry are highly critical of SMART, with a recent study by Google on hard drive problems indicating that it did a poor job indicating impending problems.
Other tools such as Scannerz (http://scsc-online.com/Scannerz.html), TechTool Pro (http://www.micromat.com/products/techtool-pro) and Drive Genius (http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php) do, IMHO, a better job of testing because surface scans can detect errors not detected by SMART yet, and all three of them do those tests. Personally I like Scannerz myself because it's to the point, hardware testing oriented, and can expose other system problems like cable problems, whereas the others are more like swiss army knife tools with a lot of features that may or may not be of use to end users. Some of the people on this site will swear by these tools, whereas others will swear at them. All three of these also monitor SMART status in one way or another.
With software tools out of the way, I'd have to agree with all previous posts, because it doesn't sound like it's probably a hard drive problem. Yes, it possibly could be, it's just that slow start ups and shutdowns are usually caused by too many apps being saved in an "on" state. Any time the system starts, it has to re-load them and resume them as best as it can, and then any time it gets shut down it must save all that information and this all takes time. (I'm assuming Lion or newer operating system is in use). This is often the most likely cause in Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks.
There are other possibilities, but you should probably ellaborate on the problem a bit more.

My Outlook/iCloud calendar invites to others appear to work on my end and sync with my PC and mobile, but when other people "accept" the invite, it will not populate/add in to their calendar. How can i fix this without turning off iCloud?

My Outlook/iCloud calendar invites to others appear to work on my end and sync with my PC and mobile, but when other people "accept" the invite, it will not populate/add in to their calendar. How can I fix this without turning off iCloud?
I am at a new office that uses Outlook (not Outlook Exchange) which does not sync with my mobile... I just got iCloud set up on my PC to sync my contacts, calendar, reminders, etc... The sync worked (not without flaws, but the other issues seem solvable... I think), so that i can now see all my appointments on both my phone and on my PC. The problem I am having is that iCloud moved all of my calendar items from Outlook into iCloud calendar and now when I send out meeting/calendar invites the recipients may accept them, but the meeting does not get added to their calendar. This is a huge problem and may mean that i need to turn off iCloud.
Does anyone know how to fix this?
Thanks!

I am replying to my own post here as I seem to have fixed the problem.
I do have some calendars that are shared. Some of those are shared with users who have time zone support turned on. So i activated time zone support on my iphone, then deleted my icloud subscription. I then signed in to icloud again and voila... problem solved.
It is a weird one as the other calendar views were always fine and when you opened an event that appeared in the wrong day (on list view), the correct date of the event was shown in the information...
one more bug in a complicated system I guess

My iPhone 6plus will no longer connect to my Dodge UConnect system. Phone calls get a beep "phone call completed" message. Music will play though. Just can't make calls. Tried turning off iCloud and repairing but nothing works. It did work a few days

My iPhone 6plus will no longer connect to my Dodge UConnect system. Phone calls get a beep "phone call completed" message. Music will play though. Just can't make calls. Tried turning off iCloud and repairing but nothing works. It did work a few days

Hi Jpcbew,
The article linked below provides a lot of great information and troubleshooting tips that can help you resolve the issue with your iPhone 6 Plus connecting to you car stereo system.
Get help using your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with your car stereo - Apple Support
So long,
-Jason

HT203909 Why can't you provide specific instructions here about how to make the USB drive bootable? The article referenced is not dedicated to Bootcamp--too long, too many options. How do you make it bootable?

Why can't you provide specific instructions here in HT203909 (Boot Camp: Creating an ISO image from a Windows installation DVD) about how to make the USB drive bootable? The article referenced for partitioning the drive is not dedicated to Bootcamp--too long, too many options. How do you make it bootable?

If your BC Assistant shows the option to create a USB Installer, it automatically is marked as bootable. There is no need to have manual intervention to make a bootable USB. Once the process is manually modified, it is supported by the person modifying it.
You have two or three options (depending on your Mac Model).
1. Create USB... - Use a USB2 flash drive, which is erased and formatted. If your Mac supports ISOs then BCA will prompt for the Media. Any Mac which does not have a built-in Optical drive will support an ISO. There are specific Mac models which support both, DVD and USB based installation.
2. Download Software from Apple servers...
3. Install Windows...
Are any additional instructions really necessary?

How to make hard hard drive turn off?

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