Non-startup disks wakes up at odd times

Hi.
My secondary hard disks keep waking up at inconvenient times, when I'm doing tasks that should have nothing to do with them. For example, launching System Preferences, clicking on a menu item, opening a file in Safari that resides on the boot drive, or simply clicking on an edit point in a file in Fireworks (which doesn't have scratch disk options). I get a beach ball and have to sit there while an irrelevant drive spins up.
It could be any activity really. The wake-ups aren't at any time, but generally in response to some user input.
All of my apps reside on the boot SSD drive, as well as current project files. The other drives are for backups and archived projects.
Is it possible that the system is using non-boot drives for virtual memory? How would I stop this?
My tower has all 4 HD bays loaded, with the primary startup disc being the SSD drive with with over 400GB free. My energy saver preferences are set to "put the hard disks to sleep when possible" as I prefer the quiet of the SSD and the energy saving benefits.
I ran a clean system install when I installed the SSD, and reinstalled most software from scratch. I did drag across a couple of minor apps from the former startup disk, now that I think of it.
BTW I had the same problem with my previous set-up; same, computer but with a standard HDD boot.
It's driving me bonkers, as it defeats much of the purpose of having an fast SSD with low latency.
Thanks.

Are those other drives searchable by Spotlight? Perhaps Spotlight is looking around for stuff. If you really don't need those other drives indexed disable spotlight for them using the Spotlight preference's Privacy settings.
Note, I'm just guessing here.

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Twist170 wrote:
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I figure I just need to see what's running on that drive and stop it somehow, or if there is another workaround?
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http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1858340&stqc=true
I pasted the solution below:
from a Terminal window, type:
ls -lOd /
(That's lowercase ell, lowercase ess, space, minus, lowercase ell, capital oh, lowercase dee, space, forward slash)
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hostname:~ username$ ls -lOd /
drwxrwxr-t 32 root admin - 1156 Feb 8 20:35 /
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hostname:~ username$ ls -lOd /
drwxrwxr-t@ 32 root admin hidden 1156 Feb 8 20:35 /
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sudo chflags nohidden /
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Model Name:          Mac Pro
Model Identifier:          MacPro1,1
Processor Name:          Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed:          2.66 GHz
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Dear coleagues, I'd like your help to understand and solve a tricky trouble. I'm sorry for the long text, but the issue is probably living in a small detail.
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What does it sound to you? What would you recommend to test? Is there an alternative for Startup Disk CP?
Thank you.
Regards, Ciro (Brazil)

Dear Jan, good Evening.
Thank you for your time.
In fact I can select a specific partition, but by closing and reopenning Startup Disk CP I realize that the selection has been attributed to the physical drive (all partitions highlighted).
I have tried Startup Disk CP in both System 7.1 and System 7.5.3. They do the same way.
Internal HDD has been formated, partitioned and initialized with Apple HD CS Setup.
This external HDD in a different way. Apple HD SC Setup hasn't been able to "see" it, probably because of its prior format system. Lido neither. That's why I went to VCP. Moreover, as it is too big for 68030, I had to format it attached to a Performa 6360. After formating, I've let VCP make set the partitions in HFS mode (partitions with 512, 1024 and 2032 Mb).
I've mounted VCP in Mini VMac to get some screenshots for you:
Bringing it back to Mac Classic II, it could be mounted with Lido, but System 7 has asked to initialize all partitions again. I've accepted, installed system 7 on it, and it didn't boot. Then I've repeated the partitioning and initializing procedures using Apple HD SC Setup (since now there's a Mac HDD with "small" logical drives). Nothing changed.
I'm following your tip about System Picker. I've downloaded the sit file and read about it. It seems to be able to overlay the problem. I'm gonna try it and report back here.
But I feel still uncomfortable not to be able to do things the regular way. As far as I know, the boot partition is an attribute of a drive partition in partition map, just like the "Active Partition" found in FAT systems. I should be able to write there as I can do with Lido in internal HDD.
Thank you, Jan.
Best regards,
Ciro Bruno.

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Welcome to Apple Support Communities
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