How to prevent hard disks from sleeping

Hello
I have recently installed a SSD for system drive in my machine, and now realise what a bottle neck the old, standard hard disk had been. Booting is now extremely fast, as is opening applications. This speed has alerted me to another problem. My hard disks keep falling asleep, which slows down operantion of the machine significantly. For instance, to log into this forum, I used 1Password. When selecting the log in menu item from 1Password, there was several seconds delay before one of the hard disk (I have four inside the machine, one external Drobo, and one external eSata drive) came alive. When it had, Safari could take me into the site. There constant delays like this when I use Safari, for example. These delays are very frustrating, so I want to keep all my disks awake constantly.
Thing tried so far:
The worst problem was the Drobo, because it has three disks inside that wake up one after the other, a very slow process, and the Drobo is slow in itself. So I installed a little script that does a touch command every five minutes, to prevent the Drobo from sleeping. It seems this has helped. But the other disks keep falling asleep all the time. I have set Cocktail to prevent all disks from sleeping - no effect. The Energy Computer Sleep setting is set to Never.
Any ideas will be much appreciated. This sleep issue keeps bugging my all day long.

In the Energy Saver system pref, are any of the boxes checked?
If it were me, I guess I'd try clicking the 'restore defaults' button in Energy Saver, restart the computer, and then go back into the Energy Saver and set the computer sleep to either 3 hours or never, and uncheck the 'put hard disks to sleep when possible' box. You might try 3 hours instead of never and see if that makes a difference.

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How Can I Prevent My Computer From Sleeping

I left my computer overnight to transfer footage in Final Cut Pro. My settings on ENergy Saver are set so that the "Put Hard Disk to Sleep WHenever Possible" is unchecked. However when I woke up this morning the screen was black and asleep and so was my external harddrive - a G Drive. So none of the files went through. How can I stop this?

Hi Molly, if it's not honoring your settings, & not sleeping due to heat or such, might try this...
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move these files to the Desktop.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist
(Then Trash the original of these last two, as "moving" them only copies them.)
Then reboot once more & setup your Energy Saver prefs.

At only 15 months of age, my MacPro crashed yesterday! Any idea how I can save my hard disk from being destroyed if I hand it in for repair?

At only 15 months of age, my MacPro crashed yesterday! Any idea how I can save my hard disk from being destroyed if I hand it in for repair?

Open it up. Buy a new replacement drive. Install Mac OS. Then give it to them if you still have trouble.
As for the install failing,
I never do the older "archive and install"
I format and initialize first, even zero the drive, and only then install.
of course all the data is lost.
Data Rescue 3 demo can scan a drive but you need to have setup a 2nd boot drive to work from, AND you would need part of that 2nd drive partition for recovery of data. 30-50GB system partition and 150% the size of the drive you want to recover.
TimeMachine I never adopted or liked but 350% and would only use as secondary backup with cloned copy of your drive.
Backups can be scheduled, run at night or weekend or both, a weekly clone and daily sets.
Disk Warrior 4.2+ is another $100 (DR3 is about same but demo is free to try).
A spare external drive case $30? and TWO hard drives, a replacement and backup/recovery $100 each?
Just some ideas to throw out there....
Bootable clones though you will find are very useful, handy.
I like the small 40GB emergency boot partition - put one on your TimeMachine drive etc.
LION: the one good thinig: it has a recovery mode partition and new Macs have "net install" feature and minimal hardware diagnostic over the internet to do Apple Hardware Test. Lion $30 and might actually want to install it on external.
So DO try installing OS X on one of your external drives - create 40GB volume just for that - if you can please.

What is preventing my Mac from sleeping?

Ever since installing Lion, both of my Mac Pros don't sleep properly.
When the machine wakes, the Mail notification sound, sounds many, many times. EG: If I have receives 100 emails since sleep, it notifies me 100 times.
How can I tell what is preventing my Mac from sleeping, or is this multiple mail sound something else?

There are few threads in this site discussing the same issue.
Causes sited are
File sharing as mentioned in your post,
Recently installed antivirus software,
External HD not properly ejected,
Print Que not cleared
and Mail constantly checking for new mail that you can change in Mail > Preference >General.
Solutions suggested are
Reset PRAM and SMC
and Repair Disk using Recovery HD.
Best.

Logic Pro prevents MacBook Pro from sleeping

I've been having trouble of late with my MacBook Pro -- it has been refusing to go into sleep mode on its own. I sat down and did a bunch of careful experiments turning various things off and on, and I've narrowed it down to Logic Pro 8! If this application is running, my MBPro will not sleep automatically. If I exit the application, it sleeps like a baby. In any case, I can force the machine to sleep manually no problem.
I am not sure whether this problem first occurred with 10.5.4 or 10.5.5.
-Luddy Harrison

Pancenter wrote:
If in fact it is Logic preventing the system from sleeping (and I think it probably is) this is new since version 8 and is probably the direct result of all the complaints version 7 received.
I'm afraid I don't find these responses to be very compelling, sorry.
First, it has always been trivially easy to turn off the sleep function on an Apple machine. Everyone who owns an Apple knows how to do this simple thing.
Second, sleep does not cause failure of any kind for properly working audio hardware and other attached devices. I have three audio interfaces connected to my machine, plus an eSATA drive, external video, and ethernet cable, and the machine sleeps and wakes up just fine. No problem. This has nothing to do with audio or real-time anything, it's just a question of writing a device driver correctly. It would be the same for a printer or a camera or anything else attached to the computer. I have one device that does not sleep and wake properly: a western digital hard drive when connected by eSATA via the ExpressCard/34 slot. Again, there's no relation to audio or recording or Logic.
I wonder if there's anyone from Apple reading this newsgroup who can comment on the actual intention. If it is indeed to disable sleep, it would be nice to know. If on the other hand, it's unintentional, maybe it means that some other setting is wrong or there's something to be done about it.
Thanks,
-Luddy Harrison

I want to give away or sell a 6500/250 running 7.6.1. How can the hard disk be erased so that the data are gone, not recoverable? thanks, LifeisRich

I want to give away or sell a 6500/250 running 7.6.1. How can the hard disk be erased so that the data are gone, not recoverable? thanks, LifeisRich

I'd recommend that you check for Mac User Group(s) in Orange County. That's where you'd likely find a diehard Mac fanatic who might want to add your 6500 to his/her collection. Even if you got nothing for it, it would be better than e-cycling it. I upgraded my 6500/275 with what was a "large" hard drive at the time (15 GBs), maxed the memory at 128 MBs, installed the 512K L2 cache card, a better ATI Rage Pro PCI graphics card, a USB PCI card, and an internal 56K modem. With it running OS 9.1, it did all of the pre-OS X stuff I needed it to do. As I previously mentioned, it's a nice-sounding MP3 player. Internet Explorer 5.1.7 (the final release from 2001) kept it useful for surfing the web up until 2005, when it became too outdated/incompatible with many web sites. Unfortunately, the demands of the internet and the need for a modern browser, as well as faster processing to digest it all, are what retired many older Macs from active duty. So my (2) 6500s and (3) 6400s (same tower design) sit in storage. There is one concern that I'll pass along: The motherboard has a 4.5-volt alkaline battery, that's a small, black plastic cube, secured in place by velcro. If your 6500 has been disconnected from electricity for a long time, the battery will undoubtedly be dead. Unlike the many Apple computers that used a small ½AA lithium battery (that I've never seen leak when completely dead), the 6500's battery can and usually does start leaking. Because the motherboard sits vertically oriented on its side edge when installed, the leaking battery will drip alkaline solution down the board, corroding any components in it path. I've seen motherboards ruined from this. If you're going to give it away or sell it, you might want to pull the motherboard (remove the two machine screws on the rear I/O panel, next to the pull tabs). Slide out the board and unplug the battery's small connector (has red & black wires), then lift up on the battery, while holding down the "toothed" velcro mount with something non-conductive, like a popsicle stick. Once it's free, dispose of the battery. If you're interested, a replacement can be purchased for about $5-$7 from battery specialty retailers - it's a Rayovac 870 or 871. Even if you don't replace it, removing one that will eventually leak is a good idea, (hopefully) before any damage is done.

Upgrading hard disk from 320 GB to 500 GB

Hi Mac Gang,
By how much will the weight of my 13" macbook pro increase by upgrading the hard disk from 320GB to 500GB?
Thanks!

It's not the size (space) of a drive that increases its weight, it's more likely the speed of a drive that affects its weight. A 7200 RPM drive generally weighs more than its 5400 RPM counterpart (given the same model and same manufacturer), regardless of the amount of disk space in GBs. (The weight difference between these two different speed drives is probably only about 10-20 g.)
FYI: Data on a hard drive has no weight, either. ; )
http://technopedia.info/tech/2009/07/11/does-hard-drive-weight-increase-with-dat a.html

10.8.5 on MacPro5,1 - disabling "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" doesn't work any more

I have always had "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" disabled in the Energy Saver section of System Preferences, but since upgrading to 10.8.5 this setting is no longer obeyed... I can distinctly hear the sound of my hard drives winding down and winding back up *very* often, and toggling the setting has no effect...
There's other threads about hard disk sleep issues with 10.8.5 and it seems this is another one to add to the list... Definitely needs to be addressed because my hard drives are powering up & down quite a lot even when the system is sitting idle, which is gonna create a lot of unnecessary mechanical wear on those drives...

Unfortunately, this is a known bug that Apple is working on.
I submitted feedback regarding this issue and surprisingly received a couple of phone calls from Apple support about this issue. I ran through several questions with the tech and advised him that I temporarily resolved the issue by restoring from a saved 10.8.4 installation. So, for the moment, everything is working as it should. The Apple tech asked if I would be willing to re-install 10.8.5 and provide some logs, but I declined since everything is back to normal now.
As a side note, it has been said on other forums, the issue can be temporarily "fixed" by setting your monitor to never go to sleep and stay on, which ironically causes your hard disks to "never" sleep either. I also provided this bit of info to the Apple tech in hopes of resolving this.

IMac - stop internal disk from sleeping

I have a 27" iMac Late 2013 running Yosemite. I am trying to stop the internal disk from spinning down or going to sleep. It is a Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001. If anyone any ideas on what I need to accomplish this please let me know.   I do not understand why they would set it up to spin down the disk. All it does is shorten it's life and replacing a drive in these systems is not that easy. The changes below are what I have done so far.   Thanks in advance!!
Jeff
The "Put hard disk to sleep when possible" is not checked in Preferences Energy saver.
The pmset command output is as follows.
$ sudo pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
DestroyFVKeyOnStandby        0
Active Profiles:
UPS Power        -1
AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
standby              0
Sleep On Power Button 1
womp                 0
halfdim              1
hibernatefile        /private/var/vm/sleepimage
darkwakes            0
autorestart          0
networkoversleep     0
disksleep            0
sleep                0
autopoweroffdelay    14400
hibernatemode
0
autopoweroff
1
ttyskeepawake
1
displaysleep
60
standbydelay
10800
$

After some research here is where I am at.
Here is why the disk went into sleep mode (output from pmset -g log"):
2015-04-03 20:51:50 -0400 Assertions              PID 29(powerd) TimedOut InternalPreventSleep "com.apple.powermanagement.darkwakelinger" 00:00:15 id:0xd00000aa9 [System: PrevIdle SRPrevSleep kCPU]
Time stamp                Domain                  Message                                                                    Duration Delay
==========                ======                  =======                                                                    ======== =====
UUID: 30C725A5-4409-4F24-843B-E6475DA41866
2015-04-03 20:51:50 -0400 Sleep                   Entering Sleep state due to 'Idle Sleep': Using AC                         60273 secs
2015-04-03 20:51:53 -0400 PM Client Acks          Delays to Sleep notifications: [com.apple.apsd is slow(2824 ms)] [discoveryd is slow(3144 ms)]
I reset my "disksleep" value to 0 but saw this message. I always thought this was just informative type message.
$ sudo pmset -a disksleep 0
Warning: Idle sleep timings for "UPS Power" may not behave as expected.
- Disk sleep should be non-zero whenever system sleep is non-zero.
$
I tried using the old "spindown" setting instead of "disksleep" but got the same message about "system sleep" is non-zero. Maybe it is telling me something.
$ sudo pmset -a spindown 0
Warning: Idle sleep timings for "UPS Power" may not behave as expected.
- Disk sleep should be non-zero whenever system sleep is non-zero.
Even though I could not find a “system sleep” or “sleep” setting in the pmset man page I thought I’d try both. The one that seemed to work was setting “sleep”.
$ sudo pmset -a sleep 0
$
I tried to see the value for sleep but it seemed not to exist. Which is strange because it accepted the command without an error.
$ sudo pmset -g sleep
Error: unhandled argument sleep
Usage: pmset <options>
See pmset(1) for details: 'man pmset'
$
What is interesting is that now when I run the command to set "spindown" or "disksleep" to 0 it does not complain that the "system sleep" is non-zero. Which I think is a good sign. Well I’ll know if it fixes it in a month.
$ sudo pmset -a spindown 0
$
$ sudo pmset -a disksleep 0
$
Jeff

Moving Hard Disk From one Mac to Another

I am thinking of buying a new macbook. I have the C2D 2.16 Ghz right now. So if I would buy, lets say the new 2.4 Ghz model, could I just take the hard disk from the one I use now and put it into to the new Macbook?
Would it boot up?
Thanks!

As i understand you already have a MacBook and your thinking of buying a new one, to witch you want to have all your present data.
Instead of removing the physical HD from one and reseating it in another you cloud try one of these options out:
1.
If you have 10.5 on your present MacBook you might think of using TimeMachine:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html
-great feature restores your whole system as you see it
2.
You have a utility called Migration Assistant, you´ll find this in Applications>Utility folder:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1554?viewlocale=en_US
3.
Use a firewire cable to transfere the information you need.
Best of luck.

I change iMac hard disk from basic to dynamic in windows 7

I change iMac hard disk from basic to dynamic in windows 7, after restart windows I saw that there is not any OS X for selecting by press and hold "Option" key.
I don't have any backup and the original DVD from the seller. I live in Iran and here there is no any Apple seller or supporting center.
What should I do to have OS X again ?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You probably erased the hard drive by doing that. If you have got a Mid 2010 or later iMac, you can use Internet Recovery to reinstall OS X > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 Hold Command, Option (Alt) and R keys while your computer is starting.
Then, open Disk Utility, choose your hard drive at the top of the sidebar, go to Erase tab and erase it in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Finally, close Disk Utility and reinstall OS X.
If you have got an older Mac, call Apple to get replacement DVDs > http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57

I change the hard disk from 500gb to 750 gb then i heard qw sound in some interval pls advice me., i change the hard disk from 500gb to 750 gb then i heard qw sound in some interval pls advice me?

i change the hard disk from 500gb to 750 gb then i heard qw sound in some interval pls advice me., i change the hard disk from 500gb to 750 gb then i heard qw sound in some interval pls advice me?

I wish it was under better circumstances, but welcome to the discussions!
It certainly sounds like a bad HD to me. Back up your data and then take it in or call Apple.

How to disable hard disk write caching?

How to disable hard disk write caching?
Is there something similar to Windows: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259716/en

Manually mount the disk, disabling the cache. With the default mount mechanisms, no. Details.

How to eject a disk from an extern drive?

how to eject a disk from an extern drive? I burned a few disc and it worked then I put another blank disc and now I cannot make it eject or burn...Please help

I usually 'right click' or 'control click' on the external drive's icon that is located on the desktop, and choose 'eject' from the dropdown menu. My external drive also has a physical eject button located on the front of the drive.

How to prevent a file from stripping?

I'm building vacation for Arch64 but should be the same for 32bit. PKGBUILD looks like this:
# $Id: PKGBUILD,v 1.1 2004/01/21 15:43:15 dale Exp $
# Maintainer: dale <[email protected]>
pkgname=vacation
pkgver=1.2.6.1
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="an automatic mail-answering program"
depends=(gdbm)
url="http://www.tosn.org/projects/vacation/"
source=(http://www.tosn.org/projects/vacation/files/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz vacation.patch)
build() {
cd $startdir/src/$pkgname
mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/usr/{bin,man/man1}
# keeps binary from building
rm -rf vacation
# fixing the Makefile - not only for arch64
sed -i -e 's: -m486::; s:CFLAGS.*= (.*):CFLAGS += 1:' $startdir/src/$pkgname/Makefile
sed -i -e "s:/usr/bin:$startdir/pkg/usr/bin:g" $startdir/src/$pkgname/Makefile
mv vacation.man vacation.1
make install
These file have been created:
[andyrtr@workstation64 vacation]$ ls -lRA pkg/
pkg/:
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x 4 andyrtr users 96 2006-01-28 09:32 usr
pkg/usr:
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 andyrtr users 96 2006-01-28 09:32 bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 andyrtr users 72 2006-01-28 09:32 man
pkg/usr/bin:
insgesamt 24
-rwxr-xr-x 1 andyrtr users 16864 2006-01-28 09:32 vacation
-rw------- 1 andyrtr users 470 2006-01-28 09:32 vaclook
pkg/usr/man:
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 andyrtr users 48 2006-01-28 09:32 man1
pkg/usr/man/man1:
insgesamt 0
[andyrtr@workstation64 vacation]$
I get this error:
==> Starting build()...
gcc -march=x86-64 -O2 -pipe -Wall -Xlinker -warn-common -D_PATH_VACATION="/var/abs/extra/system/vacation/pkg/usr/bin/vacation" -o vacation vacation.c -lgdbm
install -s -m 755 vacation /var/abs/extra/system/vacation/pkg/usr/bin/vacation
install -s -m 755 vaclook /var/abs/extra/system/vacation/pkg/usr/bin/vaclook
strip: /var/abs/extra/system/vacation/pkg/usr/bin/vaclook: File format not recognized
install: strip fehlgeschlagen
make: *** [install] Fehler 1
==> ERROR: Build Failed. Aborting...
Krusader detects it as a Perl program. Any idea?
AndyRTR

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 8:45 am Post subject: How to prevent a file from stripping?
I'm building vacation for Arch64 but should be the same for 32bit. PKGBUILD looks like this:
Code:
# $Id: PKGBUILD,v 1.1 2004/01/21 15:43:15 dale Exp $
# Maintainer: dale <[email protected]>
pkgname=vacation
pkgver=1.2.6.1
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="an automatic mail-answering program"
depends=(gdbm)
url="http://www.tosn.org/projects/vacation/"
source=(http://www.tosn.org/projects/vacation/files/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz vacation.patch)
build() {
cd $startdir/src/$pkgname
mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/usr/{bin,man/man1}
# keeps binary from building
rm -rf vacation
# fixing the Makefile - not only for arch64
sed -i -e 's: -m486::; s:CFLAGS.*= (.*):CFLAGS += 1:' $startdir/src/$pkgname/Makefile
sed -i -e "s:/usr/bin:$startdir/pkg/usr/bin:g" $startdir/src/$pkgname/Makefile
mv vacation.man vacation.1
make install
These file have been created:
Code:
[andyrtr@workstation64 vacation]$ ls -lRA pkg/
pkg/:
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x 4 andyrtr users 96 2006-01-28 09:32 usr
pkg/usr:
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 andyrtr users 96 2006-01-28 09:32 bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 andyrtr users 72 2006-01-28 09:32 man
pkg/usr/bin:
insgesamt 24
-rwxr-xr-x 1 andyrtr users 16864 2006-01-28 09:32 vacation
-rw------- 1 andyrtr users 470 2006-01-28 09:32 vaclook
pkg/usr/man:
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 andyrtr users 48 2006-01-28 09:32 man1
pkg/usr/man/man1:
insgesamt 0
[andyrtr@workstation64 vacation]$
I get this error:
==> Starting build()...
gcc -march=x86-64 -O2 -pipe -Wall -Xlinker -warn-common -D_PATH_VACATION="/var/abs/extra/system/vacation/pkg/usr/bin/vacation" -o vacation vacation.c -lgdbm
install -s -m 755 vacation /var/abs/extra/system/vacation/pkg/usr/bin/vacation
install -s -m 755 vaclook /var/abs/extra/system/vacation/pkg/usr/bin/vaclook
strip: /var/abs/extra/system/vacation/pkg/usr/bin/vaclook: File format not recognized
install: strip fehlgeschlagen
make: *** [install] Fehler 1
==> ERROR: Build Failed. Aborting...
Looks like its tring to install to /var/abs/extra/system/vacation/pkg/usr/bin....... ????
try make DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg/usr install

How to prevent hard disks from sleeping

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