Prevent external disk from spinning up

I am not sure this is really related to time machine, but here goes.
I have an external firewire disk attached, and it has one partition for time machine.
When time machine starts a backup, it wakes the disk (i.e., spins it up), which is fine.
A while after the backup, the disk spins down again, fine, too.
However, in-between backups, the disk spins up for no apparent reason.
This is a bit annoying, since i'm not using the disk at all (other than for backup), and it makes a bit of a noise, so i would like to keep the waking times of the disk to a minimum.
Any ideas?
Best regards,
Gabriel.
PS:
Yes, I have configured spotlight to exclude that external disk from indexing.
Message was edited by: GabrielZ

Experiencing the same thing here.
It's a repeat of:
Wake-up -> TM Backup -> Stays spinning for 10 minutes -> spins down -> Starts spinning 5
minutes later -> Stays spinning for 10 minutes -> spins down......
TM currently takes backup on :45, then the drive starts spinning up around :00, :15, :30.
I'm worried that the excessive spindown, spinup will wear out the HD.
This did not occur in 10.5.1. Started after upgrading to 10.5.2.
Since the FireWire HD for TM is the only FireWire HD I have, I can't confirm whether this is related to Time Machine or not.
By the way, using USB will prevent spindown, though backup will take a bit longer.

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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

How to prevent external drive from spinning up? Or, fastest quiet drive on spin up?

My external drive insists on spinning up often without reason, often for open/save dialog boxes. The spin up takes time and the computer is inoperable until it completes the spin up. As a fast touch typist, who often hits command-s to save documents in Word, this is really a nuisance. This happens with a USB and Firewire external drives. It seems to be a feature within the OS itself--and likely some other programs in the background--that want to access drives.
Is there any way of turning this behavior off? For example, telling the OS to spin up the external hard drive only for a specific application (Carbon Copy Cloner). So far, the only solution I've come up with is to eject the external drives, which isn't much of a solution if one wants automatic back ups!
Now, if there is no way of turning this off, are there drives that spin up quickly? This USB drive I have takes forever compared to the Firewire one, which also takes too long. At the same time, though, the USB drive has the blessing of running silently whereas the various Firewire drives I've had are noisy (with high pitched hums) even when idle. (I realize that the noise has more to do with the enclosures, fans, heat sink, etc.)
Quiet matters most, so if necessary, I'll just keep the external drives disconnected.

In the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences, make sure "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" is not checked. This will keep your external drives spinning, so you won't be delayed waiting for them to spin up.
"I realize that the noise has more to do with the enclosures, fans, heat sink, etc."
Yes, many if not most enclosures amplify whatever noise the drive inside makes. Your desk or table may also serve as a sounding board for your drives. Setting them on something that absorbs the vibration can help, as long as you don't obstruct any cooling air intakes or outlets.
Right now, your external drives are spinning up whenever the OS is asked to display all the possible places for things to be found or stored. I don't know of any way to limit that behavior other than unmounting the disks you don't want displayed.
Spinup time is generally shorter for 2.5" drives than for the much heavier 3.5" drives — there's just less inertia to overcome as things get moving. And 2.5" drives can also be quieter, because less mass is spinning and any tiny imbalance that might cause extra vibration is correspondingly less significant.

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.

How can I save the images and movies on a external Disk from iphoto program, to protect the images when problems occur in the laptop,

How can I save the images and movies on a external Disk from iphoto program, to protect the images when problems occur in the laptop,

Most Simple Back Up:
Drag the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to another Disk. This will make a copy on that disk.
Slightly more complex: Use an app that will do incremental back ups. This is a very good way to work. The first time you run the back up the app will make a complete copy of the Library. Thereafter it will update the back up with the changes you have made. That makes subsequent back ups much faster. Many of these apps also have scheduling capabilities: So set it up and it will do the back up automatically.
Example of such apps: Chronosync - but there are many others. Search on MacUpdate or the App Store
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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.
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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.

Hide an External Disk from Desktop

Hi to all,
i want to stay hided an external disk from viewing only, i have 2 accounts, im my (admistrator) i dont like to hide but the others accounts yes, simply when people logon the especifc drive dnot show like it not exists... it is possible??
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My airport utility is version 6.2, so there is no "Disconnect all users".
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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.
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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.
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Also here...
http://www.szilveszter.ca/news/prevent-hard-disk-drive-spindown-on-mac-os-x/
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Welcome to Apple Support Communities
If you made a backup of your files with SuperDuper, use Migration Assistant (in /Applications/Utilities) to transfer your files from the external drive > http://pondini.org/OSX/MigrateLion.html It will create a new user account with the transferred files, so you may want to merge both user accounts > https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5472
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some precisions:
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All people have a lync account and can call external number from their lync desktop.
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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

Adobe Connect prevents external users from connecting via Edge Server

Errors thrown in the logs:
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Eason Huang
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Prevent External Firewire HD Spindown

I have two Maxtor OneTouch (1 - 500GB, 1 - 1TB) HDs connected via Firewire to an iMac (mid 2007) and after upgrading to Snow Leopard, the external HDs spin down almost immediately after being accessed.
I can click on the drive, wait for it to spinup, then browse for a folder; usually by the time I find the folder and click on it, I have to wait for the drive to spinup again.
This makes the drives and the system almost useless as every time I do something which looks at the attached drives (downloading, File -> Open on any program, opening finder, etc), I always have to wait for spinup and it's becoming very annoying.
I have unchecked the system preference "Put hard disks to sleep when possible", installed the dev tools to have access to SpindownHD and neither have fixed my problem.
Since I've had these disk on Leopard and didn't experience any spindown issues (except the drives internal firmware timeout spindown) so I can only attribute it to something in snow leopard.
Does anybody else see this happening? Any other ideas to try?
Thanks,
Justin

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http://www.mosaicwebsite.com/macosx_software_development_for_leopard_tiger/nospin.asp
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090316190817357

AEBS prevents my USB drive from spinning down

Hi all,
I thought I would share my concerns about connecting USB external drive with AirPort Extreme. I've seen several post here talking about that issue, but they didn't solve my problem.
Otherwise great product, AirPort Extreme n prevents my WD MyBook 500GB disk from spinning down when not in use. I bought that particular disc, because of its ability to go to sleep when not accessed for a period of time. It works great when connected to my MacBook via FW400 or USB 2.0, but when I use it via AiPort Disk utility and connect to AEBS the disk will not spin down, keep running and getting hot. I am concerned with that fact, because it consumes more energy and will shorten disc life (yes, it is not a server graded disc, as most of USB ones, and it was not designed to spin continously).
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There seems to be a problem with AE itself. AEBS seem to keep the disc busy all the time or the disc thinks that's the situation.
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If someone has a solution to that problem, please share it with the forum readers, if not we will have to wait for Apple to fix this. I hope someone from Apple is reading this.
MacBook C2D Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Otherwise great product, AirPort Extreme n prevents
my WD MyBook 500GB disk from spinning down when not
in use. I bought that particular disc, because of its
ability to go to sleep when not accessed for a period
of time.
Other posts indicate you can solve this by privatizing the drive in Spotlight's preferences. I haven't tried this because I like the drive indexed--it is a shared data drive after all.
I turn the drive off manually when I'm not using it. Unfortunately, the Airport doesn't recognize the drive (or printers that I've turned off, for that matter) when I turn it back on. The only solution I've found is to restart the Airport. Any ideas on this problem?

Prevent external disk from spinning up

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