Stop spinning up my external hard drives!!!

OK, I have 4 external hard drives for backup purposes. They're commodity drives, Seagate FreeAgent mostly.
What's making me bat-crazy is that OS X spins them up all the time, for no useful reason.
Absolutely anytime I use an "Open" or "Save as..." dialog box in an application, the whole works freezes up for 10 seconds and I hear ALL the drives spin up.
If I click on Spotlight, again, 10-second freeze/lag while it spins up every drive. It doesn't make sense. There's no useful reason to do that. It doesn't know if I'm going to pick a file on one of those drives.
It's making me crazy. It's enough to make me want to get rid of the external drives entirely, which of course defeats backup entirely, breaks Time Machine, etc. Same problem if I unmount them. I just want OS X to stop waking up the external drives anytime I MIGHT want to use them.
How do I do that?

This was driving me insane.  I just had installed a programme called Disksomnia to try to prevent this but it wasn't doing the trick. 
I will try the energy saving solution.
The moment that I couldn't take it anymore was when I had to wait about 20 seconds for all my external drives to spin up before my iMac would give me a dictionary definition of a word in safari.
I'll let you know how it goes!

Similar Messages

  • My iMac stopped to recognize an external hard drive. What might be a reason?

    My iMac stopped to recognize an external hard drive. What might be a reason?

    Hi,
    This happens often because the processes that run over the MacOS, but the power was not enough to power your device. Actually this happens with external hard drives on any platform. Sometimes the USB port is not enough or even energizes permissions MacOS fumble.
    When your computer finishes starting up, choose Disk Utility from the Utilities window and select your external drive and click in First Aid tab and repair disk.
    Good Luck,
    Eduardo

  • My HP Pavilian dv6910 stopped seeing my USB external hard drive

    My HP Pavilion dv6910 stopped seeing my USB external hard drive. Up until 2 weeks ago I have never had a problem with the laptop reading and writing to my Seagate 500gb hard drive. I have  2 other computers that have no trouble working with the external drive. I thought maybe the circuit board in the external drive case was bad so I bought another one. Same thing. The Vista home premium software will not open the drive. Oddly enough, the drive is seen by the hardware manager and I can get volume information but Windows Explorer does not see it at all.
    The laptop has 3 usb2  ports and I have tried them all with the same results. I have other usb devises that work just fine on all ports.
    I thought maybe the driver got messed up so I did an auto search to replace and was told the current driver is ok.
    I do have a program called Advanced System Care Pro that auto cleans the registry (as well as many other things) and it might have removed something it should not have but I am not sure.
    I use the external drive for all my backups so I need to get this problem resolved as soon as possible. Can anyone help we with this?

    I meant reinstalling the operating system.
     There's a repair disc, but it's generally to repair a corrupted boot protocols.
     I had a look around and I can't find any place to download it either.
     Just thought if something _ you could try doing a hard reset.
     Shut down, remove the battery and adapter, hold the power button for 30 seconds.
     Plug only the adapter back in and boot up.
     Try you hard drive again _ give it a minute.

  • How to stop my Time Machine external hard drive preventing iMac from sleeping?

    I have a late 2012 iMac, and have discovered that sometimes (I haven't noticed a pattern of when it doesn/doesn't happen) the computer will immediately wake up after I set it to Sleep (Apple Menu>Sleep). Through elimination I have found that it is the the USB 3.0 external hard drive I use as a Time Machine back-up that is the culprit; unplugging it then allows the computer to sleep. If I unplug it, then plug it back in later on, this normally solves the problem for a while, but not forever. This same Hard Drive didn't cause the wake problem on my previous '08 iMac.
    A big issue is that when the machine immediately wakes from sleep, the display stays off (until I move the mouse) - this is good from a power saving point of view, but means I don't know if/when the machine is immediately waking from sleep (I have to listen to the fan when setting it to Sleep mode to hear if it has actually woken back up).
    I've searched the forums, but can't find another poster with the same problem as myself. Can anyone advise a course for me to pursue to prevent this from happening?
    Thanks. Jamie

    Hi Frank. Nope, I'm still having the same symptoms; the plugged in external drive (TIme Machine) will wake the machine up a couple of seconds after it winding down when put to into sleep mode. Ejecting the drive and then sleeping the machine works. After plugging it in again to do a Time machine backup, it will allow the computer to sleep soundly for the first few sessions (eg a few days of sleeping, waking, sleeping, waking, etc), but then it will then suddenly start preventing it from sleeping again after a while.
    It seems I'm fortunate in my case that the display stays dark (or off?) when the machine has been woken from sleep, but this was actually preventing me from knowing the machine wasn't in fact asleep for quite some time; I only eventually cottoned on because there wasn't any delay when 'waking' my machine (which there normally is). I would then have to carefully listen to the spinning fans to know if in fact it had gone to sleep or not.
    So, to summarise, unfortunately no, I haven't solved this yet. If anyone else has a solution, please let us know?
    Also, I've noticed occasionally after waking that there is a relatively quiet 'crackle' sound (kind of electrical sounding) from the bottom-right area of the machine. This goes on every so often for about 30mins. I see this is also an issue with other people's late 2012 iMacs, but I've not seen if anyone has a solution to it?

  • Confirmation on How to Stop Spotlight Indexing an External Hard Drive

    Hello everyone,
    I know there are a number of posts on this but I just want to confirm: Can I stop Spotlight from indexing my external FireWire hard drive by adding its name to the Privacy pane in Spotlight's preferences when the drive is mounted? (I'm a little low on internal hard disk space on my iBook so I want to keep the index as lean as possible.)

    Georgy
    Keep in mind that the index is stored on the drive that is being indexed. As such, indexing an external volume does not affect your main drive.
    Remember also, that when you do update your external drive, the indexing only updates the changes made to the drive on the fly, provided of course if it is mounted and allowed to do so.
    My suggestion, let Spotlight index the drive. Particularly if you are using it as a backup. Once in place, updating the index and searching is extremely fast.
    Be careful however, of using third-party solutions. Some will affect Spotlight's normal indexing process and their preferences have to be changed for Spotlight to work.

  • MacBook Pro running Lion constantly spins up external hard drives while sleeping

    My MacBook Pro 8,2 running Lion 10.7.2 constantly spins up its external hard drives (one Firewire 800 and two USB) while sleeping. Is there any way to prevent this? The drives will spin down for a minute or so and then spin back up, which is incredibly annoying. Have to shut the computer down to prevent this.
    Thanks. I’m happy to provide more details if needed.

    Might be Spotlight indexing...  you can turn that off.
    Turning Off Spotlight | Mac Tricks And Tips

  • Spinning down external hard drives

    A while back I wrote a little app called sumount, for safely unmounting usb hard drives.  While try to make it work a little more reliably, I came across hd-idle.  Hd-idle does a fantastic job, much better than my little hacky script.
    I've requested my app be deleted from the AUR (it is stupid and redundant), and am posting this to the forum so the four people who use it know to switch :-)

    The drive will spin down if Energy Saver tells it do so in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Energy Saver. I have found though, spinning down an external hard drive sometimes is not desired because Energy Saver may not be able to give back all the power the drive desires when it wakes up. This can lead to an improperly dismounted volume causing occasional directory damage. My suggestion is to simply dismount it, and leave Disk Utility up so you can mount it again. Disk Utility is in Applications -> Utilities folder.

  • External hard drive not recognized with Snow Leopard?

    This isn't a new problem, but I finally can't avoid solving it any longer!! When I updated to Snow Leopard, my iMac stopped seeing my LaCie external hard drive (firewire). I've gone through the steps at the LaCie site and checked for updates from Apple, but no luck. I do see an "unknown device" in "About this Mac," but I can't get it to recognize it.
    Has this problem been dealt with? Thanks in advance.

    monicadale wrote:
    I do see an "unknown device" in "About this Mac," but I can't get it to recognize it.
    LaCie support is usually excellent, you might give them a call, if you can't find enough on their site.
    Look in Disk Utility... is it mounted, or grayed out?
    Does it show a volume or not (the indented listing under the drive icon)
    If it's not mounted, try choosing it and using the mount icon.
    Have you tried reformatting the drive?
    Launch/Utilities/Terminal and enter this command at the prompt:diskutil listPress return. Note the number of the disk (far left column) you want to unmount.
    Launch/Utilities/Terminal and enter this command at the prompt:
    diskutil list
    Press return.
    If it sees the disk, note the number of the disk (far left column) you want to mount.
    Then, enter this command:
    mount /dev/(number of disk)
    Put in the number without parenthesis.
    Press Return.
    You may also want to run sudo diskutil repairVolume /dev/(the number of the disk)
    Let us know.
    -mj

  • My WD External Hard drive can be read and edited on my old macbook but not on my new

    My WD 1TB hard rive can be read, edited and have files saved on it from my OLD Macbook Pro. I have recently got a NEW laptop and it can read the files on my hard drive but it cannot edit any of the files, change folders or move files in to different folders. The operating systems are the same on both laptops. I have tried this with other MacBooks and iMacs and there is the same issue.
    My old laptop also very resently has stopped being able see my external hard drive at all now. I am not sure if my external hard drive is locked to my old laptop or if my new and other macs have a setting which stops them editing this external hard drive.
    Thanks

    Go to the WD site - they have both support questions and answers and a users group that can help you with questions.

  • "Open with..." accesses external hard drive?

    Whenever I right click on a file and choose "Open With" to choose the program that I want to open the file with, it spins up my external hard drive as if to look for the programs on it or something. This caauses quite a delay as it won't display the list of programs until the hard drive is at full speed. any ideas?

    Have you unmounted the ext hd and rebooted? Does the mac start up normally? If you can save/copy what you have on the ext hd I would reformat & try.
    What make is the ext hd & is it mac compatible?
    As no other tekky answers have shown up it may be an AppleCare call...L

  • 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

  • Delay on save as external hard drive spins up

    I have an issue with Snow Leopard that seems new.
    Often when I go to save a document there is a significant delay while the external hard drive spins up. This happens also sometimes when I go to open a file from within an application.
    I have spotlight set to not index that drive. How can I stop my computer from thinking that something I may want to save to the external hard drive? I would like to ignore it all together except for when I use Time Machine.

    You can try the energy saver settings, telling OS X to not spin down drives. However, for external drives, often they do their own thing.
    There's no way to do what you want, unfortunately. The standard file dialog will probe all attached drives, so when you try to save, and the drive is spun down, it will wake and respond. As you've noted, this can take a few seconds.

  • Why are my external hard drives always spinning up?

    DESKTOP MAC.
    I came home to my Mac after a day away, and found one of my external hard drives had been running apparently all day. The only thing I had open was Camino and iTunes, and also Activity Monitor.
    DESKTOP MAC.
    I often find the other hard drive(s) spin up at seemingly random times, for instance as soon as I sat down and started browsing the Web, the other external hard drive also spun up.
    Why? I didn't do anything which would call for them to be active.
    Is there any way to tell if certain applications have incorrectly placed important files on the external HD's (i.e. Safari putting its cache there, or iTunes linking to songs on an external)?
    Are there utilities which can tell me which applications are banging on which disks or volumes?
    DESKTOP MAC. Not laptop. Please do not give answers which use the words "sleep", "clamshell" or "battery". Again this is a desktop Mac not a laptop.
    Oh and one other thing. It's a desktop Mac. Not a laptop. External drives are USB. Also it's a desktop Mac.

    If it is a desktop machine, you want the hard drives to keep running all the time; it is disastrous to their longevity to be stopping and starting repeatedly.
    I have a Seagate (that is NOT a recommendation) that I bought at a local PC outlet, and it insists on stopping and starting every 35 seconds or so, when I am not using the machine.
    I found the utility Keep Drive Spinning on Apple’s web site ( www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/keepdrivespinning.html ) and I added it to my login items. During the boot process, it shows a dialogue; I click on a volume on the drive and type in 33 (seconds).
    Thanks, Jon Stovell!!
    p.s. There is a setting “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible” in System Preferences: Energy Saver. This should be off, for the same reason; this is strictly for laptops, in my opinion.
    p.p.s. If I leave my machine on, while I am not using it for a day or so, I put it to Sleep; under those circumstances, Keep Drive Spinning does allow the machine to sleep properly.

  • How do I stop iTunes from automatically importing songs I listen to from my external hard drive into the music library?

    How do I stop iTunes from automatically importing songs I listen to from my external hard drive into the music library?

    Mac OS X: Double-Clicking a File Opens the Wrong Application - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2291
    -= Changing the application used to open all files of a certain kind (written with reference to OSX 10.4 but may not have changed) =-
    1) In a Finder window highlight a file of the kind you want to change the application to open that kind of file.
    2) While that file is highlighted, select File > Get Info or press command (apple or propeller icon) + i to get a file information window.
    3) In the lower part of the info window there is an "open with" menu with a list of applications.
    4) If your application is already in the box then it is the default application for opening that kind of file and you don't need to do anything more.  Close the get info window.
    5) If the application showing in the menu is not the one with which you wish to open the file then select a new application. If your application does not appear there then select the "other..." and track down the application (usually in the Applications folder at the main level of the computer).
    6) If you wish to change all files of this type to open with this application in future, make sure the "change all" button is selected.
    7) Close the get info window.

  • I bought an external hard drive in June (this yr) and it suddenly stopped appearing on the desktop. Disk Utility could see it. It wasn't the cord - now that I've tried that, the ext won't even turn on. I need that data off the drive BADLY! Help!!??

    The drive stopped showing up consistently at first, then stopped all together. Disk Utilities could see it, verify it but not repair. I need it backed up. I took it to a local computer shop who tried a different cord. Nothing. When I got home, I read through several support forums dealing with this issue. One said I needed to zap my PRAM on my MacBook. I did so. Now the external won't even turn on! Any hope of getting the data off that drive? It is still under warranty but undoubtedly the firm will NOT attempt to back up the drive before issuing a new one. I downloaded something called TestDisk 6 that another forum suggested but no one offered any clue how to use it. I cannot figure the first thing to do with it! It appears to may be a Windows formatted program, anyway as most of the instructions end in the suffix .exe. I'm at a total loss...both personally as well as having already lost a complete week of business. Any suggestions would be appreciated but please note - I am NOT that computer literate. Just telling me to download something won't help me if I can't figure out what to do once it is downloaded. Also, taking this hard drive apart will void my warranty. Not that that is the biggest of my worries at this point but I wouldn't have the first clue anyway! I live in an area where we have something called Mac Authority in the mall and a Best Buy. Those are the only 2 connections to Mac-related stuff I have access to. Help!!! Please?

    If your external drive does not have an independent power supply, you may wish to consider a couple of lower-cost options before tossing the drive. Bus-powered drives have no external power source and must get all their power from the computer. They can exceed the computer's USB energy budget.
    Cheapest option:
    1 Meter USB 2.0 A to 5 Pin Mini B Cable - Auxiliary USB "Y" Power Design for external hard drives.
    This gets power from two of the computers USB porst sna can provide enough power to wake up an under-performaing bus-powered drive.
    If you don't have enough ports to use this, try the next cheapest option:
    Newer Technology 7 Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Hub with Power Adapter for Mac & PC
    Such a hub has a an independent power supply to make up for wahat the comptuer fails to provide.

Maybe you are looking for