Random CD Drive spin ups.

Well i have 2 cd drives, the internal one and an external LaCie cd drive, both currently have CD's in them. Intermittently the CD drives spin up even when i'm not doing anything with the CD's and they can stay that way for 5 or even 8 minutes. While this is happening the eject is very slow in responding on the external drive. But the internal will eject instantly.
Is anyone else having this problem? Does anyone know the cause?

Are you running any applications which open a file "open" window? If anything scans the disk bus, and the CD drives have CDs in them, this will scan the bus. So this would be something like "save as..." or open a file or something.

Similar Messages

External Drive Spin-Ups

Ever since installing Leopard, my external (backup, using SuperDuper) hard drive spins up on a regular basis throughout the day, then spins down after being "active" for about 10 minutes. I have Time Machine turned OFF so don't think that's the cause. Does Leopard spin up external drives periodically for some reason?
Thanks,
WK

Unfortunately, if you set the Energy Saver option to spin down drives whenever possible, the OS will then spin up all sleeping drives regardless of which drive is actually being accessed. You can turn off this option in Energy Saver but that may not help because some drives seem to sleep on their own depending upon their individual firmware. OS X has no way to put a single drive to sleep or to wake up regardless of the state of any other drive on the bus.

Errant External Drive Spin-Ups

I've had this problem since system 8 or so, but I'm finally aggravated enough to seek help.
Every once in a while, some errant action (e.g. launching an app or opening a file or window) will cause my external hard drive to spin up from sleep, slowing down my system for ten secs or so. It happens even if the hard drive has nothing to do with the items/apps I'm handling. It's random.
These days, my external drive is mounted 24/7 so it can fulfill its Time Machine duties, so this is starting to get really annoying. If I dismount the drive to avoid this problem, then I'll have foiled my backup scheme.
Ideas?

Nope. I have the same issues but my machine sits and waits for 4 drives to spin up, and I'd swear they do it one at a time

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

Lion time machine - external drive spin up causing apps to crash

I have a 1TB external drive set up for time machine backups on my 27" iMac running Lion 10.7.3 that seems to be causing my Adobe CS 5.5 suite of apps (photoshop in partiucular) to crash as the drive spins up. If an adobe application or lion/time machine is asking the drive to spin up I have no idea, but it seems random, and when it does, the adobe app(s) freeze and the beach ball from **** just spins. All other applications remain uneffected which leads me to believe it's related to a scratch disk function of some sort. I've googled high and low to find an scrap on insight into this issue and have found nothing...
Few questions:
• Why does the time machine external drive randomly spin up even though there are no backup processes running?
• Why would an adobe app would need to access an external drive?
Before anyone says it, I know I can always just eject the drives, but I'd rather keep my backups running for obvious reasons. If a complete wipe and install is the only solution recommended by the doctor, I will. It's just maddening to regularly loose work. Any help is greatly appreciated!
iMac: Mid 2010 27"
Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50)
Adobe CS 5.5
Photoshop CS5 / v12.1 x64
Illustrator CS5 / v15.1.0
InDesign CS5.5 / v7.5.2
External Drives
Firewire800: 2TB Hitachi G-Drive: http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive.cfm
USB: 1TB Western Digital MyPassport 0730

Set the TM drive not to spin down, I think there is a setting in the system preferences.
Could be the G drive feature,
consider making option key bootable clone drives
Most commonly used backup methods explained

DVD drive spinning far too fast on Equium

I have a problem with my DVD disc drive spinning far too fast to me. I have Windows XP on my Toshiba Equium laptop.
I haven't found any way to set CD / DVD spin speed.
I don't know if there is any, but I have used such feature in an other computer, and I would really much like to slow down the speed.
The problem with speed is not malfunction.
I don't face the problem with DVD:s, but the drive is too effective with CD:s, its literally too powerful.
The speed and noise are insane. If I touch the computer or the table where computer is, the shaking hurts my hands.
It's like a motor saw, and also sounds a bit loud.
I can't hear the game I play while CD is spinning.
I wonder the sturdy construction of my computer, while it's still not broken.

Hello
I don't know which notebook model do you have but Toshiba has designed small tool for such purposes. It is acoustic silencer. When you watch DVD movei or when you listen music CD you can switch into silent mode and you will not hear that DVD drive works.
Visit Toshiba support page and check if this tool is available for your notebook model too.
Bye

Trying to copy ANY file from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive spins for 45 minutes then fails. I hate this computer and WISH I never would have wasted my money. Any ideas? WD My Passport 2TB Drive, had to buy a program to make the POS write

Trying to copy ANY file from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive spins for 45 minutes then fails. I hate this computer and WISH I never would have wasted my money. Any ideas? WD My Passport 2TB Drive, had to buy a program to make the POS read files. Copies that would take seconds from a Windows based machine never complete. I have to close the transfer or shut off the machine half the time. Worst computer I have EVER owned, crashes non-stop, constantly freezes, and seems like EVERY operation is more complicated with this thing. Literally, my 1997 Compaq was FAR MORE reliable and user friendly.

This is one of the messages I keep getting; The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in -- File Whatever -- can’t be read or written.(Error code -36)
I have copied things to the hard drive in the past, but it has always been incredibly slow, and now just seems to freeze and fail

Hard drive spins down and have to do a hard reboot

I have an Intel iMac 3.06 (April 2008). Ever since I upgraded to Snow Leopard especially when I am using itunes (9.02) (downloading) the hard drive spins down for no reason at all.The energy settings are fine. The only option I have is to hold the power button down for 5 sec and reboot when it happens. I know this has been an issue with other intel iMacs but when the "fix" for other machines was available it said my machine did not need it. I beg to differ. This is getting very annoying as I am sure it is not doing the hard drive any good having to hard reboot all the time.
I have tried the power management reset which has not resolved the problem.

Hi David
Welcome to Apple Discussions
1. In the Energy Saver preference try setting Computer sleep: to "Never" and make sure the the box "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" is unchecked.
2. Try resetting the System Management Controller as described in the article below.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543
Now then if you are still having a problem you might also:
1. Use the Restore Default button on the Energy Saver preference panel and then reselect your sleep settings.
or
2. Go to: Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences > SystemConfiguration and trash the "com.apple.PowerManagement.plist" which also restore's the Energy Saver preference to default, then go back to the Energy Saver preference and reselect your sleep settings.
Dennis

Fans & hard drive spin, no start up tone or display... help?

I just sold my old G4 tower on ebay, and the buyer tells me there's no start up tone or anything on his monitor, but the hard drive spins and so do the fans. The CD drawer opens but holding "c" and booting from the software disk doesn't work. He's tried resetting the pram, pressing the cuda switch and removing the battery. I of course made sure the computer ran before I shipped it, and in fact this computer has never given me any problems whatsoever. Does anyone have suggestions for what to do from here? Or even a guess as to what happened... I'm confused because there must have been some damage during shipping, but the box was fine and the computer was fine inside as well. On top of that, I'd expect some kind of an impact to affect moving parts like the hard drive, but that spins with no problems, and if it was just a hard drive problem booting from the software disk should work.

Hi, Alex, and welcome to the Discussions!
Any chance that the new Mac owner might join the Discussions and get an independent review and advice from the Members? We'd be happy to help him try to get up and running, as long as it's kept independent from this particular topic (since this really isn't a place for a potential buyer-seller dispute...)
What model Mac are we referring to here?
As previously referred to, the startup memory settings are commonly lost when one has a weak, dead, or defective battery and the Mac is then disconnected from an AC power source for a period of time. Oftentimes, the Mac can be restarted by removing the battery completely, doing a PMU reset, hooking up the power cord, and restarting with the battery removed. This might confirm that the Mac is indeed okay, perhaps maybe just needing a new battery (which he can test with a voltmeter, per Texas Mac Man's Tutorial).
You didn't mention whether or not the owner is using your original monitor, mouse and keyboard. This could be pertinent information in troubleshooting this, if the PMU reset/battery doesn't correct things.
Gary

External hard drives spinning up incessantly

I have 4 external drives with about 12 volumes on them and it's literally spinning up a drive every 5 minutes, 24x7 when I am not even using the computer. Nothing weird is running, and it's clear the application is exactly Finder. (and rarely, fseventsd). Here is the output of
sudo fs_usage -f filesys | grep Volumes
01:00:55 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000012   Finder
01:00:55 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000024   Finder
01:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000013   Finder
01:13:04 getattrlist
/Volumes/Giant
0.000014   Finder
01:13:15 getattrlist
/Volumes/Giant
0.000013   Finder
01:17:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000012   Finder
01:17:30 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000013   Finder
01:32:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000016   Finder
01:32:30 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000011   Finder
01:47:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000072   Finder
01:47:30 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000014   Finder
01:54:37 getattrlist
/Volumes/6snow
0.000012   Finder
01:54:49 getattrlist
/Volumes/6snow
0.000014   Finder
01:56:56 getattrlist
/Volumes/4tiger
0.000012   Finder
01:56:57 getattrlist
/Volumes/4tiger
0.000023   Finder
01:57:14 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000014   Finder
01:57:23 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000013   Finder
01:57:49 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000016   Finder
01:57:50 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000024   Finder
01:58:32 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000012   Finder
01:58:32 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000021   Finder
01:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000009   Finder
01:59:18 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000008   Finder
02:00:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000014   Finder
02:00:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000015   Finder
02:00:55 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000019   Finder
02:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000015   Finder
02:10:01 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000022   Finder
02:10:01 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000010   Finder
02:10:01 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000009   Finder
02:10:01 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000013   Finder
02:10:07 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000010   Finder
02:10:11 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000023   Finder
02:10:11 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000025   Finder
02:10:11 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000012   Finder
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Giant
0.000015   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000010   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/U3 System
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000011   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/4tiger
0.000010   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/6snow
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000008   Preview
Note the 02:10:12 "all drives spin up" event. That was opening a PDF in Preview. The PDF was in my home directory/Downloads on "Macintosh HD". The rest is entirely Finder; I was doing nothing at all.
I'm hearing a spool-up literally every 4-5 minutes.
I have essentially given up, and dismounted all the drives until I have need for something on one of them. Of course that kills Time Machine.
Since there is no rime or reason for these accesses, I am NOT impressed with the argument that "drives should spin 24x7, it's better for them". This is a home system, not a server. I know how often I actually need data off these drives - several times a day and many days not at all. So I should use a program to force them to spin 24x7 (by doing more unnecessary accesses)? That's like leaving a hot water faucet open 24x7 to deal with a glitch in an on-demand water heater.
I want the drives to spin down. And stay spun down. And then, when I choose to access something on one of the drives, or an application has something it's going to actually use the drive for (e.g. midnight backups) -- I want it to spin up. Simple enough?
I am running 10.5 but my searches tell me Snow Leopard is worse, and Lion is worse yet.

Good point, just checked, and the answer is no. I had 3 Finder windows open, all viewing the main hard drive.
They did, of course, have the hard drive icons along the left edge.
Edit (from here):
But I wasn't doing anything with Finder during these times.
This activity occurred when I was not using the computer at all.
04:00:41 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000009   ScreenSaverE
04:00:41 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000022   ScreenSaverE
04:02:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000015   Finder
04:02:22 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000019   Finder
04:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000011   Finder
04:59:18 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000005   Finder
05:02:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000013   Finder
05:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000016   Finder
05:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000014   Finder
06:02:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000013   Finder
06:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000021   Finder
06:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000006   Finder
06:59:18 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000006   Finder

Installed a cloned a 500g solid state hard drive but unable to boot. Can only hear drive spinning quietly, no chime to launch OS. Total darkness. Can anyone help? thanks in advance!

Installed a cloned 500g solid state hard drive but unable to boot in macbook pro. Can only hear drive spinning quietly, no chime to launch OS. Total darkness. Can anyone help? thanks in advance!

Hi Retired Engineer,
Yes, you're right. It is the Seagate Momentus XT and it does not spin. That was just a layman's term for computer illiterate like myself. After hours of inspection & a prayer, I discovered by pulling the 4 GB memory chips out I put in, replacing the 1.5 GB back in for the memory which I upgraded 3 years ago. Chime! It works! So it is the 4 GB memory causing the problem. But why? Does that mean my Macbook Pro does not support with more memory? The fan noise is now gone which I suspect it was caused the other overheating Seagate hard drive & eventually causing the crash. However, the top bar temp indicator shows 174˙F @ 000rpm. Does that also mean the fan on the left is not working? (the right fan on the board works). Do they work simutaneously? Or left fan is just a back up?
Thanks for your reply & kind gesture.

Hard Drive Spin Down....Good or Bad??

'Two questions, really, but first some background. I have an earlier Mac Pro running 10.7.3 (as I recall). I also have a Sonos music system. All the hard drive bays in the Mac Pro are occupied. The first has a 2 TB Western Digital RE that has my OS and all my files on it. Bay's 2 and 3 have two 3TB drives from Hitachi which are mirrored and serve as my internal daily backup which is run and cloned by CCC. The fourth drive is another RE that has copies of all my music. I simply copy my two iTunes folders and any other music I want the Sonos system to access to this fourth drive. My reason for doing this is that I wanted to minimize the run time of my main hard drive as not so long ago, I had two Seagate drives go belly up on me. All the music on the fourth drive (that serves the Sonos system) comes from my main hard drive which is backed up to the two mirrored internal drives as well as a G-Technolgy mirrored external drive, so I'm not concerned with backing up the drive serving the Sonos system. So......
Question one is: Which is better for drives in general, to keep them spinning all the time, or to allow or force them to spin down if they aren't being accessed?
Question two is: If it is better to spin down a drive, how can I selectively spin down some drives and not others?
For instance, I'm thinking that it is better to spin drives down, then I'd like to be able to spin down drive #1 with my OS but not the Sonos drive because the Sonos system prefers that the drive not spin down or there are connection errors.
Thanks for all your answers and suggestions!

I understand the limitions of mirrored drives, but my main drive is not mirrored. What is mirrored are my backup drives. One daily backup onto mirrored drives in bay's 3 and 4 in the Mac Pro. And a less frequent backup on mirrored drives that are stored in a fireproof safe in the garage. Should my main, non-mirrored drive fail (hopefully it'll be a long time as it's an enterprise class drive), I've then got any one of four cloned drives to choose from. Of course, I would choose the most recent ones that are internal, but should something catastrophic like a fire occur, I'd then have two identical cloned and bootable drives in the garage.
I recognize that in the case of a real catastrophy, the drives in the garage won't be as current as the drives in the Mac Pro, but in both cases, the backups themselves are pretty robust because they are mirrored. If one backup drive fails, the other will likely be fine and I can then easily proceed from there.
It set up properly, mirrored drives offer some great redundency in case of hard drive failure. What prompted me to go this route was three drive failures in one year, all of which were Seagate Barracuda drives and relatively new. And two of them were backup drives. My backup drives are now Hitachi and mirrored in case one dies. And CCC makes it so I can just plug the backup drive into my #1 bay and I'm back up in business. Except for MS Office which somehow limits the number of times it can be cloned and you have to call MS and get a new product code. Easy to do, but a pain. I learned this as a result of swapping cloned drives in and out of my wife's MacBook. It all worked perfectly until I did it once too many times and MS wouldn't load. Hence the call to MS.
Thanks for all your feedback!
Oh, and any info on controling which drives spin down and which don't?

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

PB17 internal drive spins down during bootup; computer shuts down

my internal hard drive has crashed 3 times in the last week, each time on boot-up during the grey screen spinning wheel mode. the wheel will stop spinning, and simultaneously i can hear the internal drive spin down, then the computer shuts down on its own. i am able to boot from any external bootable hard drive.
when i boot from any external drive, the internal drive does not mount. when launching the utility Drive Genius from the external drive, the internal drive still doesn't mount but does list the drive in the list of volumes/device window and does list the details of the drive. the drive is listed with its BSD name, not its DisplayName.
Drive Genius is able to DUPLICATE the internal drive, and i'm able to boot from that duplication. if i select REPAIR, Drive Genius goes thru it's process of examining but is never able to actually repair the drive. for each time that the drive has crashed, if i select the REBUILD option, even though it always reports back that it was unable to repair the drive, when finished with the report, the drive mounts automatically with the correct volume display name. i am then able to boot from the internal drive, and everything works fine...till the next crash.
Apple's disk utility hasnt been any help, although i've repaired permissions successfully after recovering from each crash.
any thoughts?

If your drive happens to be failing, then there is nothing that any software application can do to fix it. Maybe you should boot from the Install & Restore DVD that came with your PowerBook holding down the Option key, and run Apple Hardware Test to see if that provides any insight....
Have you considered reformatting the PB's drive and reinstalling your system?
Good luck.

Hard drive spins very fast during youtube viewing

My hard drive spins fast every time I watch youtube or any other video streaming sites. Is it normal? or bad. You will know that the HD spins if the fan is on right?
HELP...

Hi dattebayo: If the fan is spinning up while viewing videos or other CPU intensive activities, that is what it is meant to do. Without that the CPU and the computer in general would shut down pretty quickly. The program I mnetioned earlier is available here. http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=7
Stedman

Random CD Drive spin ups.

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