Need external HDs to spin down

Hi to everybody, I apologize if this ain't the right setionfor my topic as it is highy related to hardware and just a little to SL.
This is my problem: I took a couple of WD 500 Gbyte and placed them in a single box each. I the did a software RAID0 within Disk Utility.
Both disk are stil working fast but do NEVER spin down even if my iMac is shut down.
I found several utilities to prevent HDs from spinning down but non for forcing them to spin down after a certain idle time. I also set 5 minutes of idle time to spin down with Xcode's utility HDSpindown but nothing changes.
Any help?
TIA
Simon

Just out of curiosity, can you tell me the utilities that keep disks from spinning down? I have a drive in my Pro that's spinning down and it's driving me crazy. I've contacted the manufacturers and Seagate has no solutions and WDC suggested I buy a PC. You know what I told them.
Thanks

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Preventing external HDs from spinning down

Anyone know of a better way of preventing my OWC external FireWire HardDrive from spinning down (and hence slowing some/most? Finder operations down) than 'Spindown fix 1.1' (http://www.index-site.com/software.html)?
TIA!

Mark,
I don't think this works on external drives, but you may want to check to see if your Mac's Disk Sleep Timer setting may have been changed. Disk Sleep Timer is one of your Mac's Power Management settings and can be found under the Power item in System Profiler. The default setting for Leopard is 180 minutes, but for Tiger it was only 10 minutes, which was quite annoying.
You can change this setting by typing the following command in Terminal:
sudo pmset disksleep ?
Replace the ? with the number of minutes you want to set and press <Return>, then when prompted, type in your password. If you use a setting of 0 (zero), the hard disks will never sleep, unless you checked "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" in the Energy Saver Control Pane.
Again, I don't know if this works with external drives, but it's worth a shot.
Keith

Stop External HD from Spinning Down?

Is it possible to stop an external HD from spinning down when connected to a MBPro? It seems that the setting in the energy saver control panel have no effect on external drives. I'm using my laptop (MBPro 2.33Ghz) for music production and don't want my external drive to spin down while I'm working.
Is there any way to keep it spinning?

This may be a "feature" built into the firmware of your external drive. If so it will not be affected by your Energy Saver settings. I recently had to advise someone with a "Western Digital MyBook" spinning down to ask the manufacturer for help, but the outcome was that the only solution was the purchase of an uncrippled drive. Being in the firmware, the "feature" could not be erased or altered.
"Is it possible to stop…"
Yes, but only in what I would consider an unacceptable manner, e.g. by having a small script that constantly accesses the drive, but I would suggest that a) it should not be needed, and b) it would be highly likely to interfere with other things you were doing.
So, as a start, you should a) read any docs that came with that drive, and b) go to the relevant site and see what you can find out.
I hope that none of this applies to you, but I just thought you ought to be aware of the possibility.

Stop external disk drives spinning down

Just got a new imac 27" - dlighted with it in every way :-) 10.7.1
All my backup drives are external of course. Mostly OWC FireWire.
In the past have used SpinDownFix to keep 'em rolling so that there's no wait while they all start up every time anything needs to access the FileSystem.
But I can't help thinking there must be a better way.
Anyone know of one, please for Lion?
TUA!

Hi Mark,
Energy Saver box unchecked... and my 3 externals ( 2 x FW 800, 1 x USB ) keep spinning on my iMac...
Do your Ext HDs have any proprietary software installed on them...?
If so, this could be why they keep spinning down...
Cheers

External USB drive spins down after 5 minutes' idleness

Hi, all.
This new Seagate 300 GB drive is doing everything well ... except staying "up".
As long as I read from or write to it within the 5-minute period, all's well. Otherwise it spins down. (Doesn't matter which of the 3 USB ports it's connected to.)
The next data-touch brings it laboriously to life again, but I need it to stay up without interruption.
The consistent 5 minutes suggests there's a setting I'm ignorant of, but my Energy Saving settings are all "Never!"
Much obbliged for your insights ...
Ike
MBP Core Duo 2.16 2GB Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Well, from the start I carefully left that box unchecked.
But the trouble has to come from something like that, doesn't it--the period before spin-down being so unvarying? What other than Energy Saver tries to schedule things in OS X??
USB disks themselves have no scheduled shut-down features, or? (I see nothing relevant at the Seagate site.)
And this external drive is plugged into the wall, so this can't conceivably be a function of the USB port power issues we read so much about in this forum, right?
Aaaarghrgh!

External hard drive spinning down (and up) on it's own

I thought my 5 month old external 1tb dual drive was dying at first, but now am seeing a pattern. There is a forum over at macrumors about this. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=445690
I always make sure in my energy settings i have spin down external drives unchecked, because it's known that spin downs and ups can cause drives to fail sooner. Yet I now find my external drive spinning down whenever it's not in use while I'm sitting at my computer, and i hear it spin up at the most random times, even when i'm not using my computer. sometimes in the middle of the night. This did not happen in tiger.
It's connected by firewire 800. At first I thought it was time machine but others in the macrumors forum claim it isn't that. I almost think its network activity. I'm considering using an applescript to access the drive every 5 or ten minutes automatically yet not do anything just to see if this stops it from spinning it down. I do consider this an annoyance and would hope apple will figure out what it is very soon, before it causes any detriment to the life of my expensive drive.

did you ever find a fix for this?
my ext FW800 drives constantly spin down, then when i do something later i get the beachball until they spin back up

Can I Keep My External HD from Spinning Down?

I've got an external HD connected to my Mac Pro running Snow Leopard. But I'm always getting spinning beach balls as I wait for the external drive to spin up and become available.
Is there any way for me to keep that drive always spinning?
The Energy Saver setting "Put the hard Disk(s) to sleep when possible" is already unchecked.
Thanks for any help.
-=-Joe

Here is a discussion on the subject from a dubious source...
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=493300
In a Discussion on CHUD tools...
I have a NewerTech miniStack connected to my eMac, and I follow one of the oldest mantras in computing: "Save early. Save often." That means saving every few minutes, but sometimes OS X puts your external drive to sleep sooner than you'd like, and that means that you have to wait for the drive to spin up to speed before your file can be saved.
From a source I never use but I believe you have linked here once or twice:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html
"To conserve energy, modern hard disk drives are designed to spin-down after a certain period of inactivity. This is usually referred to as "hard drive sleep" but the technical term is Standby mode.
In Standby mode, the hard drive is in a state of low energy consumption and its platters have ceased to spin. It is awaiting a read or write instruction, at which time the hard drive will spin-up its platters — wake up and enter Active mode — to perform the read or write operation. It can require up to 30-35 seconds for a hard drive to spin up once in Standby mode."
Also here...
http://www.szilveszter.ca/news/prevent-hard-disk-drive-spindown-on-mac-os-x/
I believe I could do a fuller search but I did do due diligence for 'ya
-mj

External Drives Spinning Down

Greetings All;
Although the upgrade to Mountain Lion went without a hitch on all of my machines, since the upgrade my external firewire drives spin down when not in use.
They do spin back up after a few seconds when accessed. This obviously isn't a major issue...just wondering if anyone else has experience this. Any thoughts? All the best....
Syd Rodocker
Apple iTunes U Administrator
Tennessee State Department of Education
Tennessee's Electronic Learning Center

Joe;
Thanks for the response! Glad to hear I'm not the only one. I have multiple FCP editing systems and a couple of iMac's for graphics work, so I've now begun only powering up the drives that I need for the day's current project. Interesting development. All the best...
Syd Rodocker
Apple iTunes U Administrator
Tennessee State Department of Education
Tennessee's Electronic Learning Center

External FW Drives keep spinning down

I've researched this issue on and off for a couple of months now and am not yet satisfied with what I've found so far. I have a couple of external hard drives One G-RAID 500GB and another modified G-Drive (I recently replaced the original drive an put in a new Western Digital 500GB IDE drive inside).
THE PROBLEM: Both external drives keep spinning down after about 8 to 10 mins of inactivity. Is there a way to prevent this?
Other forums say that OS X will ignore the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" setting for external drives while other suggest that this spin-down is a function handled by the firmware of actual hard disk drive. If the latter is true then I guess the question would then be which drive manufacturer makes a drive that doesn't spin down?
It's very annoying to have to to wait for the spin-up (beach ball) every time you want to save your work. Yes it's only a few seconds but when you have lots of work to do this is an annoyance you can do without.
APPLE: If you are reading, please chime in. Is it true that OS X's "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" setting doesn't work for external drives?
I've also wondered OS X is the one issuing the command that orders the external drives to spin-down. And if so, how do you turn it off?
Maybe a command in Terminal?
Thanks,
Xavier

THis is certainly a common problem with WD drives, especially, but it may apply to others as well. Do you know what brand of drive is installed in the G-Raid?
Apart from the drive itself it could also be precipitated by firmware in the bridge enclosure.
One solution to this sort of issue is to simply create an automated process that briefly accesses the drive before the 'spin down" process occurs.
You will find a page on how to do this HERE (you will obviously have to substitute the name of your own volume for the one in the article).
An easier way if you don't want to mess around at that level is to simply use a script or app to do the job.
Take a look at Keep Drive Spinning which is free, or "No Spin" which is shareware, for example.
Cheers
Rod

Firewire drives won't spin down when I put iMac to sleep

I have three external hard drives connected to my iMac in a FW800 daisy chain. It used to be, when I put my iMac to sleep, all three of the external drives would spin down and go quiet. I replaced the drive in the middle of the chain with a new one (both LaCie), and now none of the three external drives spin down when my I sleep my iMac.
Does anyone know how to get them to spin down?

It's a known issue for many many brands of FW800 drives. I've been reporting this to apple for a while. With 10.9.2, my particular drives will spin down if they are mounted and unmounted but if my system wakes from sleep which will spin up all drives, they stay that way until I mount and unmount again. So....10.9.2 is a little better but FW is still borked.
This is the primary reason my Mac Pro is still on Mountain LIon. My MBA is on mavericks. A note of caution...Mavericks writes to the NVRAM, sometimes when dual booting it is good to clear that memory.

Time machine keeps spinning my external drive up and down...

What's the reason for this madness? It spins my external hard drive up and down continuously, even when I'm not using the machine! My computer is in my room it's waking me up because it clicks every time it spins up or down.
I'm also concerned this will effect the life of the hard drive. It's a continuous cycle, it spins down for about 20 minutes at a time, then spins back up for about about 20 minutes, then again... So much stopping and starting continuously can't be good for the drive.
What's causing my machine to think it needs to back itself up even when I'm not using it?

Because it does a backup every hour maybe?
Even when you are not using it.
Just because you are not using it doesn't mean that new files aren't being created or destroyed, which may need to be backed up.
It would perhaps be nice to be able to configure the frequency of the backups.
I have three machines backing up to the same backup drive, which keeps it pretty much always humming. I would consider dropping the frequency on a couple of the lesser used ones down to a backup every few hours, or even once a day.
Cheers, Ed.

Spin down / spin up External HD

Morning all,
I'm hoping someone can help me out on a request.
I currently run four external HD's at home, each with there own tasks and storage needs. I have set (using pmset in Terminal) my discs spin down times to 5 mins rather than 10, so these sleep quicker than normal when not used. I'd like to be able to spin down / spin up these disc's on instruction, rather than waiting the 5 mins.
I have put together Applescripts which I then build into Automator which I can run from Finder, and would like to have a simular script to spin down / up the drives on instruction.
I'm very new to writing scripts so this maybe something simple, but I just can't find a solution. Anyone got any ideas ?
Many thanks in advance.
Neil Holmes.

Sorry, I misunderstood you to already have the commands you needed for pmset, so I didn't look too closely at that command.
What I have determined is that you don't have the ability to force the disk to spin down immediately - but rather, as you have already discovered, to set the idle duration before it will spin down; the minimum being one minute. (I also noticed that to make a setting stick you need administrator permissions, so I have included that syntax here.)
I am not sure if this gets you any further forward, but the AppleScript syntax to spin down after one minute idle would be*:
do shell script "pmset -a disksleep 1" user name "<adminuser>" password "<adminpass>" with administrator privileges
and setting to never spin down would be*:
do shell script "pmset -a disksleep 0" user name "<adminuser>" password "<adminpass>" with administrator privileges
I am probably being stupid here, but wouldn't it be dangerous if you were able to spin down the disk on command?
*In each case, open Script Editor, cut-n-paste the text between the lines and amend for your username and password - retaining the double quotation marks, but not the braces - and click run.

Making my external not able to spin-down

Hey all,
I've got a portable hard drive that's kinda screwed up, and won't spin up correctly 95% of times I try to start it (I've sat there for hours trying to get it to start powering on and off). I need to get it replaced, but until then...
Anyways, I use it to run live media to a projector for events, and if I leave it alone, it spins down and I can't get it back online when I need it. Is there something I can do that will specify that disk not to spin down? (even if I have to redo it if it changes the mounting drive spec.) It's currently usually set as /dev/disk1s2, so use that to reference the command (I'll probably have to change it as it changes with my setup).
Sorry if this is all horribly confusing. I saw some other forums, but nothing specified which disk shouldn't spin down.

Nah, the energy saver options only specify to internal drives. Does anyone know any UNIX commands that would help? I've seen tons of message boards of UNIX commands to keep a drive spinning, but never one for an external drive.

Stop external HD randomly spinning up and down

Hi,
I have just bought and installed a LaCie P'9230 2TB external HD to use as my Time Machine disk. I was previously running Time Machine just once a day to an iOmega disk, which I would switch on only when I wanted to run the backup. With the new LaCie, I thought I would leave it on all the time and use Time Machine Editor to program Time Machine to run twice a day.
The LaCie works fine, and Time Machine runs twice a day as scheduled. However, the LaCie will go into "Eco mode" after a few minutes of inactivity, and then go to sleep. This is fine – I would be quite happy for it to go to sleep and stay asleep until Time Machine wakes it up twice a day. The problem is that something seems to be waking it up every 15 minutes or so, causing the disk to spin up. It then goes back to sleep again after a few minutes, and the cycle continues. Note that this happens even if I'm not actually doing anything on the machine at the time – in other words, it's not caused by me opening or saving files, running searches, etc.
I know that constant spinning up and down is a major cause of early HD failure, so I'd like to find a way around this. Ideally, I'd like to find a way of letting the disk stay asleep until Time Machine wakes it; failing that, I'd prefer it to stay awake all the time and not go to sleep at all. I've tried unchecking the option in Energy Saver to "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible", but this seems to make no difference – presumably because the Eco mode/sleep function is baked into the LaCie firmware and cannot be overridden by the OS.
I've spent ages trawling the interwebs; I've found is that this seems to be a common complaint, but haven't found any definitive answers. Really hoping someone on here might have some insight and/or suggestions.
Thanks,
Rob

This may be a "feature" built into the firmware of your external drive. If so it will not be affected by your Energy Saver settings. I recently had to advise someone with a "Western Digital MyBook" spinning down to ask the manufacturer for help, but the outcome was that the only solution was the purchase of an uncrippled drive. Being in the firmware, the "feature" could not be erased or altered.
"Is it possible to stop…"
Yes, but only in what I would consider an unacceptable manner, e.g. by having a small script that constantly accesses the drive, but I would suggest that a) it should not be needed, and b) it would be highly likely to interfere with other things you were doing.
So, as a start, you should a) read any docs that came with that drive, and b) go to the relevant site and see what you can find out.
I hope that none of this applies to you, but I just thought you ought to be aware of the possibility.

In Yosemite: External Hard Drives Won't Spin Down

Since installing Yosemite, my external (and perhaps internal) drives won't spin down in energy saver mode: 'Put hard drives to sleep when possible.' I'm using Seagate Barracuda 2TB internal drives in external Voyager Q drive bays. They seem to be getting a little too warm, I can also feel them spinning.
Thanks!
Steve

Thanks for those diagnostics & remedies. Those are good to know. Performed all of them but the problem persisted. I tried swapping out different drives and discovered that it was one particular Seagate drive that wasn't spinning down. So that was the culprit. Going to check out the Seagate discussions here or on Seagate and see what can be done, probably nothing.
Thanks much!
Steve

Need external HDs to spin down

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