Put hard disk to sleep when possible

Hi, is there any other reason to do this besides saving energy? Does it extend the life of the disk? Or shorten it for that matter with the extra spin-ups/downs?
Thanks,
Dave

Hard drives have a recommended maximum number of Start/Stop Cycles. For the Raptor it's 20,000. Some other drives are rated at 50,000.

Similar Messages

  • 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. 

  • Putting Hard Disks to Sleep?

    Is there any way to lengthen the time the hard drives are put to sleep once I've activated "put hard disks to sleep when possible"? The default seems to put them to sleep within minutes, and I'd like to change it to one hour if possible.
    Thanks!

    Why bother in a desktop machine? Sleeping the drives is mainly a power saving feature mostly for laptops. If you uncheck the box in Energy Saver it defaults to 180 minutes of idle time. If you want an hour idle, then why not just set Energy Saver to put the computer to sleep after one hour of idle time?

  • If I set my iMac not to sleep, but set hard drives to sleep when possible will they sleep?

    If I set my iMac to never sleep, but my Hard Drives to sleep when possible why don't they sleep?

    They don't sleep because your Mac is using them (as your Mac is turned on). If they go to sleep, you may damage the external drives because your Mac doesn't unmount the drives first

  • 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.

  • "Put harddisks to sleep when possible" vs longer HDD life?

    Something I've been pondering:
    I can save battery by telling the computer to put the harddisk to sleep when possible, but am I sacrificing HDD life span by spinning it up and down often?

    I doubt that you are making much of a difference in either respect. It probably takes less energy to keep an already spinning disc spinning than it does to start it spinning again, if the interval is short. If it's longer, putting the disk to sleep probably does save a little energy, and the strain on the drive's mechanical parts will be less than if it's spinning down and back up again every five minutes.

  • "put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" setting - YES or NO?

    I've searched.... but I can't find a definitive answer.
    Is it a bad idea to NOT "sleep" my hard disk(s)?
    (i.e. - uncheck the "hard disk(s) sleep" option)
    I have a new macbook and I'm running Time Machine on an external (powered) drive. I have my computer set to "put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" but I'm having problems with "improper device removal" warnings when I wake up the macbook. I would hate to shorten the life of my drives - but potentially corrupted
    files on my Time Machine disk kind of defeats the purpose of back ups.
    I realize that "sleeping" conserves battery life - but when the macbook is plugged in, what should I do?
    thanks

    the external hard drive is unmounting itself and I receive the "improper removal" warning. I've seen similar posts in the Time Machine discussions. It seems that it might be a sleep related issue. Macbook wakes - but doesn't wake external?
    (Although one time it unmounted while the macbook wasn't sleeping)
    At first I thought it was because the drive was bus powered -so I switched to a powered drive. Problem still happened - so I removed the drive from my usb hub and plugged straight into macbook usb port... but the problem is still occuring.
    (Also.... wondering if verifying my back up drive will assure me that no data corruption occurred with improper removal...of should I do another complete backup?) thanks

  • "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible": How to Exempt One Drive?

    I have a Mac Pro with 4 internal hard drives, 2 external hard drives, the built-in SuperDrive, and a new Pioneer BDR-205 internal Blu-ray drive. Here's the problem: If the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" option is enabled, when the system puts the BDR-205 to sleep, it will never wake up unless the computer is shut down and restarted. (Basically, it disappears from the System Profiler and can no longer be accessed.)
    If I turn off the Energy Saver "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" option, then the BDR-205 never has a problem -- but then none of my other drives ever go to sleep, either.
    Does anyone know of a way to exempt a specific drive (or drives) from being put to sleep by the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" feature? I've found where the settings for this feature are stored, in \Library\Preferences\SystemConfiguration\com.apple.PowerManagement.plist (the setting is Disk Sleep Timer -- 0 = never sleep, any other number = how many minutes before a drive is put to sleep), but I can't find where there might be some undocumented option to allow us to say, "Don't put THIS drive to sleep". It seems silly that this option is an all-or-nothing proposition.
    Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

    I am having the same difficulty. A way to exempt a specific drive from sleep would be most useful.

  • Does "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible) work with external drive

    I have an external backup drive which I use for doing daily backups. I have set an iCal alarm daily to remind me to turn the hdd on at the right time.
    When Time Machine comes along in a couple weeks, I am going to be leaving this drive on all the time while I'm working on my computer but was wondering if the energy savings mode of putting the hard drive to sleep applies to external USB drives as well? Would be nice to know that when I put my computer to sleep at the end of the day that my external drive also goes to sleep. I'm not sure if this has to be a function of the external box or if OS X can shut off the drive.
    Any wisdom?

    You can test this very easily:
    The "Put the hard disk(S) to sleep when possible" default time is 10 minutes of inactivity.
    Just leave your Mac alone for 10 minutes: you should hear both drives spinning down. If the external noise was not clear enough, you can then "wake it up" by double-clicking its icon on the desktop:
    If it was spun down, you'll have to wait a couple of seconds or so, with the spinning colored beachball, while it is spinning up again.
    Note that if you're performing a task that uses only you Mac's internal HD, the external should spin down while you're using your Mac. Then if double-clicking its icon shows the colored spinning beachball stalling, it's very clear it goes to sleep as intended.
    Most of the external hard drives should be able to spin down, at least all my LaCie do it with no problem.

  • I use windows and i got my hard disk replaced now when i try to sync wirelessly my ipod detects my computed as being a different one how can i make it forget the old one?

    i use windows and i got my hard disk replaced now when i try to sync wirelessly my ipod detects my computed as being a different one how can i make it forget the old one?

    You will have to sync it to the new one, erasing the current content from the ipod and replacing it with the content from the new drive.
    Make sure you have copied everything from your backup copy of your computer back to the new drive first.

  • Ipod hard disk spins continiously when connected to PC, kills battery?

    when ipod 4th generation is connected to PC/Windows Pro, connecting to itunes and downloading songs, hard disk spins continuioulsy discharging the full battery in 5 minutes. Battery is good because it will play 5 hours on full charge. Genius at Apple Genius Bar say hard disk spins continiously when it's hook to PC, he say this discharges battery, genius does not know why HD spins continously.... say it should only spin once every 20 min or so while downloading song, when hooked to mac at genius bar, downloads songs as designed

    see Restore to factory setting helps
    if does not try the following as the spins may caused by the bad sectors on the HD of the iPod
    For Window computer
    Go to folder “My Computer”
    Hope you can see your iPod there and right click on the iPod
    Choose “Format”. Ensure the settings are at “Default” and that “Quick Format” is not checked
    Now select “Format”
    Eject your iPod and do a Reset
    Open the iTunes 7 and click “Restore”

  • Put Mountain Lion to sleep when I close lid

    Can anyone help me put ML to sleep when i close the display lid? I've benn hunting google and ended up with searchterm <mac lion sleep "close lid" -external -wake -battery -airplay> which gave me nothing.
    What I need is: wifi off, disk activity off, roaming network connections off, geo Location off, internal microphone off ...and so on. You are probably thinking "Why not press power button and click Sleep or Shut Down?!?"
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    You can put your Macbook on deep sleep (or hibernate mode) instead of putting it in sleep mode when the lid is closed.
    Even in sleep mode, the memory is running in the background to perform some basic operations.
    But deep sleep would put your MacBooks into a complete shutdown mode and resume when you turn it back on.
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    This would enable the Deep Sleep mode in MacBooks.
    Press the Power button each time you want to wake your Mac from deep sleep.
    The default is:  pmset -a hibernatemode 3

  • Putting iMac display to sleep, when using TV as a screen.

    I have just connected my iMac to my 42" Panasonic 1080p TV, the connection was easy and is working fine. My questions relates to putting the iMac display to sleep when using the TV as a monitor, if I am watching You Tube, Sky Player or a DVD, I intend to use my TV as the monitor. Is it possible for the iMac to puts its display to sleep, whilst leaving the TV on. I played around with this today, however was unable to manage this.
    Regards Craig

    Hi Craig
    There is no way to independently sleep either the iMac's Display or an attached Display/TV. However if in the Display Arrangement Preferences you set the attached Display or TV to be the Main Display and turn Mirroring Off, then FrontRow and the Full Screen Mode app's like, DVD player, QuickTimePlayer, etc. will black out the unused iMac display.
    Dennis

  • [SOLVED]Hard Disk not recognized when installing

    Hey all, I'm just starting with Arch and I've had some trouble installing it on my Acer netbook.
    My first installation went well except that I had forgot to download the wireless tools so I decided to do a fresh install as I had no access to a wired connection at the time.  The second installation attempt must have had some error on my part as Arch failed to start after selecting it from Grub, saying that the kernel was not available/not recognized.
    Now my subsequent attempts at installing have failed because the hard disk is not recognized when running either cgdisk or cfdisk.  Instead of showing my hard drive partitions after running
    cfdisk /dev/sda
    it shows my usb drive. If I instead use
    cgdisk /dev/sda
    it displays an error saying that the disk is damaged or not recognized.  When I first saw this I thought my disk was failing, so I tried #! to see if it would show the same error, but it was able to recognize the entire disk and install correctly.  Now, even after having the entire disk formatted as ext4 with #! installed, cgdisk is still giving me the same error about a damaged disk.
    Am I doing something incorrectly or is there a fix for this?  I haven't been able to find any information about this after a good while of searching.
    Thanks for your help.
    Last edited by Forest_Leaves (2013-03-05 08:30:24)

    srs5694 wrote:The cgdisk "damaged disk" error is probably a result of the tool seeing an MBR partition table on your USB flash drive, rather than the GPT disk it's expecting. If I'm right, you should not follow s1ln7m4s7r's advice, since that will simply trash your USB flash drive!
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    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$disk bs=4096 count=1
    - this will delete all partition-table data
    sgdisk -o /dev/$disk
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    /dev/$disk
    - this will make you enter ncurses-based GUID partition table (GPT) manipulator, where you can create new partitions
    You should only do this if you are certain of what disk it is.
    Now if when you said this, you were meaning it will became broken, then it may be a special kind of usb drive because i've donne it many times and i've not broken any.
    srs5694 wrote:My guess is that either your hard disk has become /dev/sdb (this can happen in some cases; disk identifiers aren't really fixed) or you're missing a driver for your hard disk controller because you've booted a different kernel or a different initrd file. Another possibility is that there's a hardware fault -- probably a loose cable -- that's preventing the kernel from seeing the disk.
    If the usb drive is not where you installed arch, then you need to find if there are more recognized drives:
    lsblk | grep disk
    And see the uuid of the root partition you want, and add it to your bootloader boot line:
    blkid /dev/sdxx
    Last edited by s1ln7m4s7r (2013-03-04 19:17:36)

  • Cannot put G4 powermac to sleep when using Logic pro 6

    Hi There,
    Not sure if anyone can provide any help/suggestions, but I keep encountering the same, which is that when I using Emagic Logic 6 and want to put the computer  to sleep. It puts the screen to sleep but not the hard drive, as I can hear the fan going around as per usual, but after that I cannot get the screen to come back on and it appears that the system has crashed as nothing I do via the keyboard or mouse produces any response and I have to manually re-start computer by holding down the power button.
    I am able to put the computer to sleep otherwise, but for some reason not in Logic at the moment!
    Any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.

    Many thanks for responding Eriksimon and I shall take heed.

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