"Speeding up" extra internal hard drives...?

Question

In addition to the "stock" 250G, I've installed a 750G and a 1T. The 750G is for random storage, and the 1T is for my iTunes and video stuff, etc...
However, every time I use iTunes, launch a file, or even bring up spotlight, etc, both drives seem to have to "get up to speed".
This is a bit surprising, becacause I assumed if I went "internal" instead of "external" the speed of access would be at least CLOSER to that of my main drive.
Is there any way to speed them up?
Or, at least, keep them from constantly "going to sleep"?
tia,
e

Answer 1

Ed,
I have 4 internal drives and there were times when I would have to wait 5-10 seconds for multiple drives to spin up, which can be very annoying. But there is a cure.
There is a Power Management setting called Disk Sleep Timer that can be found under the Power item in System Profiler. The default setting for Leopard is 180 minutes, but your Mac's default setting may be different. You can access System Profiler under the Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Information.
This setting can be changed 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.
I may use a little more power having the hard drives running full time, but to me it's worth it in reduced frustration.
Keith