Why are Firewire Drives Sleeping?

I have several Firewire drives that are suddenly being sent into sleep mode, which was not happening previously. I checked the Energy settings in Preferences, and the "+never sleep+" option is chosen, so I'm stumped as to what is suddenly causing this behavior. Does anyone have any suggestions on what else I can look at?
Thanks

The "sleep" of your external FW disks is normally invoked by the controller of your external HD. For instance my WD My Book sleeps every now and then, even though I have enabled "Never Sleep" . The only way to prevent this from happening is to make sure your drive is accessed frequently enough.
Also have a look at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090316190817357&query=sleep
Hope this explains it,
Hayo

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Firewire drives sleeping too much.... help?

Hi all,
I have seven external Firewire drives, both Lacie D2 and G-Raid. Seems like ever since I got the G5 these drives go to sleep in about 10 minutes if I don't access them. Then when I have to do a search, or use the finder, I have to wait for a full minute while the drives individually spin up (one after the other after the other... etc.).
The System preferences settings make no difference. This is a big problem for me. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Matt

Well, Matt,
Energy Saver default behaviour is to spin down all internals and externals that are left unaccessed, at the same time after 10 minutes of inactivity, if you chose the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" option.
And to let them all awake if it is unchecked.
—> One thing you can set yourself manually without Developer Tools:
The spindown time for all internals and externals.
Set it to 120 minutes instead of 10, using this Terminal command:
sudo pmset -a disksleep 120
so that they stay awake long enough but sleep at night still.
If you want them to never spindown, type this command:
sudo pmset -a disksleep 0
If this works, it means a preference file is corrupted somewhere. The one that "tells" Energy Saver settings to PowerManagement.
I don't know which one is it, but hopefully Preferential Treatment would find it?
(Here, a Terminal command that verifies even more prefs than PT:
sudo find /Library/Preferences -name *.plist -exec plutil {} \;;find ~/Library/Preferences -name *plist -exec plutil {} \;
Let us know!
Curious too,
Axl

Firewire drives sleeping on the job

I have put turned every energy save preference off and my lacie firewire drives still shut down after awhile until wakened. This is causing a problem when I am printing long clips to video (FCP). I talked to Lacie and they said the drive has no intelligence, firmware or otherwise that would be doing this.
jmf

Cocktail has a setting that keeps all drives awake and it is a pretty good maintenance product to boot. I have 3 LaCie Extreme drives and none sleep after the Cocktail fix.

Why are my drives so slow on my new 24" iMac???

I ran a couple tests and the data transfer rate on the internal HD on my 24" iMac is 43.5 MB/s write and 44.1 MB/s read using a 1GB file. Did it with a larger 2.4GB file and got up to max of 57.7 MB/s read speed. Ran same test using external FireWire 800 drive and got 45.7 on the write and 46.8 on the read. I was expecting for both the internal and external drives a transfer rate close to double this. Is this speed "normal" or is something whacked on my iMac?

I'd be real curious to see what results you get. My iMac's internal drive is a WDC WD3200AAJS-40RYA0. The specs on that drive are: Transfer Rates Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max), Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk) 972 Mbits/s (Max). I checked speed using Activity Monitor (in the utilities folder), AJA Kona test program, and I just ran Xbench 1.3 which is a pretty cool free benchmarking utility as I could compare results to other systems. Free program available here if you want to benchmark your system to compare: http://www.xbench.com/ It appears that my uncached write speed of 47.73 MB/sec (4K blocks) was quite a bit slower than another same system that had 81.04 MB/sec speed. Not sure what to read of all of this but I notice a lag when clicking around . For example when I click on Finder/Applications for the first time there is a delay of a couple seconds until the program icons show up. My son's MacBook laptop displays the icons instantly. So I'm trying to figure out where my lag is coming from. Below is a full print of my Xbench results:
Results 143.33
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.1 (9B18)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model iMac7,1
Drive Type WDC WD3200AAJS-40RYA0
CPU Test 138.13
GCD Loop 282.63 14.90 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 135.75 3.23 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 110.09 3.63 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 111.48 19.41 Mops/sec
Thread Test 181.30
Computation 195.84 3.97 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 168.77 7.26 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 155.52
System 164.97
Allocate 247.12 907.51 Kalloc/sec
Fill 137.04 6663.05 MB/sec
Copy 146.16 3018.95 MB/sec
Stream 147.09
Copy 137.45 2838.90 MB/sec
Scale 143.67 2968.24 MB/sec
Add 154.57 3292.66 MB/sec
Triad 154.13 3297.14 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 192.53
Line 177.53 11.82 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 237.86 71.01 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 190.11 15.50 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 181.58 4.58 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 186.37 11.66 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 182.16
Spinning Squares 182.16 231.08 frames/sec
User Interface Test 301.07
Elements 301.07 1.38 Krefresh/sec
Disk Test 63.91
Sequential 84.93
Uncached Write 77.74 47.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 78.25 44.28 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 94.17 27.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 92.28 46.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 51.23
Uncached Write 20.61 2.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 108.12 34.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 83.79 0.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 119.28 22.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Why are thunderbolt drives so expensive?

It has been over 2 years since thunderbolt ports were introduced to macbooks and there is still a very small number of portable thunderbolt hard drives available on the market. The drives that are available are extremely expensive, most at least 3 times the price of an equivalent USB 3.0 drive. Why has the price not fallen and why have we seen very few new drives on the market?

all drives / conventional ones/ , are limited by platter and spindle speeds.
Just stick with USB3 hard drives like the rest of the world.
Ive got nearly 100 HD, and a couple of free thunderbolt HD,
they dont impress me any at the price point.
flamesofazure
Apple NEVER made hard drives
Apple never made thunderbolt or USB enclosures for hard drives.
Apple doesnt mfg. HD, / SSD/ RAM.

Why are Toshiba driver updates asking for passwords to open?

I am running windows 7- 64 bit on my Toshiba L850 part no: PSKDLE, when prompted by Tempro I download the recommended driver update but once downloaded my peazip says...
Archive is not readable. Would you like to try a password?
Then asks for a password or Keyfile to open and extract the file. What is wrong and how can I fix it?

If there is some problem with specific Toshiba driver please post the link or let us know which driver do you mean exactly that we can see what are you writing about.
I would like to test it on my machine.

Why are only my sleep and home buttons working but the screen doesnt recognise my touch

So last night everything on my ipod touch 2nd gen was working fine. then when i woke up, only the sleep and home button worked. My screen isnt picking up any sort of touch at all. when i press the on button, it wont let me slide to unlock. when i press the on and home button at the same time to turn it off, it will not let me slide to power off. HELP!!! It is passed the original 90 day warranty (very old no damage though) and i need an answer ASAP

have you tried charging the device ?
if so and it still does not work you can try a Forced Recovery..
by holding the HOME button down and plugging it into your computer at the same time..
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1808

MacBook Pro 8,1 beeps 3 times on boot from FireWire drive: why?

Hi, all,
about the brand spanking new 13" I bought, I immediately wanted to boot the FireWire drive so I could install Snow Leopard. Install disk image was copied to a dedicated partition on the FW drive to speed up install process.
Holding the [alt] key during startup leads to 3 beeps that are indefinitely repeated. I also tried to select the relevant partition in the Control Panel Startup Disk. Same result
Why doesn't it want to start from this image? How can I solve this issue?

In fact, it is a late 2011, not an early 2011 "New Old Stock", so you're correct it shipped with Lion. But, aside from its weird ergonomics (Dynamically-attributed spaces and different gestures from the previous OS X versions), what turned me off was the official complete impossibility to get a physical copy of Lion at a reasonable price, when it is installed. I also wanted the mounted drives to appear at the top left corner in Finder windows, as they did in pre-Lion OS X, instead of the bottom left. I wanted to put back the Firefox profiles in their place... Turns out the Library folder isn't visible in Lion.
Simply put, anything I wanted to do to start on the good foot wasn't possible on Lion.
I went to the Genius Bar, and indeed their own external rescue drive also made the Mac beep. I told them about the Snow Leopard tethered downgrade. They were aware of the method, but there was no Snow Leopard Mac remaining in-store. And with the install DVD causing kernel panics, there was no way to at least try a dual-boot installation (Snow Leopard for mission-critical apps, Lion for playing around with).
To another Apple-approved place I went. The young tech here was willing to perform the downgrade (since it would have cost me $75/hr), and had both Snow Leopard and Lion machines. But I argued that I wouldn't be willing to pay twice since I intend to switch to SSD in a short while. He then tested when booted from a clone, and Snow Leo half-installed on the internal drive (needs one reboot during installation), but it ended up in kernel panic. Same went when he tried the physical Snow Leopard disk after formatting the internal drive, hypothesizing something detected on it may prevent Snow Leopard installer to boot. It immediately went into a kernel panic.
Both techs were actually surprised that this signal came out, instead of a message stating (official) incompatibility, as well as kernel panics.
My hypothesis is there's something in the Snow Leopard installer that accesses the hardware at a lower level during installation, but not during normal execution or Target Mode, hence causing kernel panics in the former.
What else can be tried, or what else didn't go through my mind?

Firewire drive not accessible after sleep

I have an external firewire drive connected. The drive works fine until the Mac sleeps.
The Mac sleeps and the drive spins down.
On wake from sleep, the system cannot access the drive. I can hear the drive spin up and it is still mounted on the desktop and in Disk Utility but the system cannot access it (spinning beach ball).
Any apps that were accessing the drive at sleep time are now locked up waiting for the drive eg FCP. The only way I can recover is to switch the drive off and on again and FCP etc has to be force quit. This drive has the Prolific PL3507 chip.
Anyone know how to fix this? I think I should return it to the supplier.
My other drive with Oxford 911 chip works fine, never a problem.
Bruce
imac intel 20 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Couldn't resolve it.
Took the gear back to the shop and finally got a refund. Be careful with Prolific stuff.

I just added two external firewire drives and they keep going to sleep. I did not have this problem when USB. I have turned off "put disks to sleep" in power preference.

I just added two external firewire drives and they keep going to sleep. I did not have this problem when using USB external drives. I have turned off "put disks to sleep" in power preference.

It is not clear if these are the same drives, just connected
differently, or different drives?
One thing that may be happening is that the drives firmware
itself is putting it to sleep when inactive. Many drives on
the market have ths feature and it is turned on by default
and require a drive utility from the manufacturer to disable it.

Firewire drives are locked in custom mode

I did and archive and reinstall on my notebook hard drive and after completing it all my external firewire drives are locked and in custom mode. I am unable to change them to read/write. I can unlock the drives, but appears that it has no effect. When I try to access the drives it tells me I have insufficient privileges. I have run apple disk utility and disk warrior on permissions with no success.

I just had a client who encountered this. What causes it and is there a simpler way to resolve it?
My client had 6 drives that had all their permissions set to custom and they were all in a locked state.
How is that even possible at all and why doesn't the permissions routine in Drive Utility solve it?
This was a seriously frightening ordeal and had I not found this thread all the data on those drives might have been lost.
Does anyone have any explanations?
As for the above fixes, I was able to utilize the terminal to solve the issue but not with any ease. I had to attempt it numerous times per drive and after about 20 to 30 attempts, I was able to finally get them all unlocked.

Problems with External Seagate GoFlex Firewire Drive Disconnecting on Sleep Mode

I am Running a 2.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo 24" iMac running Mac OS X 10.7.3. I run time machine to backup to an external Seagate 3TB, FreeAgent GoFlex Desk, FireWire Drive. When the Mac goes into sleep mode, the Seagate drive un-mounts. When the Mac wakes up, I get an error that the drive was not properly disconnected and the drive is no longer mounted. The only way I can get the drive to remount, is to remove power from the drive for several seconds and then reconnect it.
I have seen several people talking about this issue in various forums with many various makes and models of FireWire drives, but I see no answers to this issue from Apple. Does anyone have a resolution to this issue, or are we just stuck with this problem? It is terribly frustrating!!!! The lack of response or interest from Apple is even more frustrating!!!

Wish I had an answer, or even a clue about this one. I have a Western Digital MyBook Studio that I've had for a fair number of years now and finally had to resort to just plugging it it as a USB device. Since it's only used for Time Machine backups and storing things I rarely need, it's not a huge burden, but I'd love to hear from anyone with a suggestion as to how to fix this. I recently upgraded from a 17" late 2006 iMac to a Mid 2011 21.5" iMac and would really like to go back to FireWire if it's not going to be a big-ole-pain in the hind end.

Sleeping firewire drive causes system crash

I have a 320 GB external firewire seagate drive connected to my Dual Ghz Quicksilver G4. At least twice a day, when I try to access that drive, I experience a system crash, what I believe to be a kernal panic. I get a message telling me I need to shut my computer down and restart it. I am thinking this is not so good for my computer.
So, either the hard drive is the problem or it's the third party firewire card i have installed in one of my PCI slots. But here's the thing, other drives are connected to that card.
Would keeping the Seagate drive awake stop this from happening? It goes to sleep all the time. Have others experienced problems with the seagate drives? Should I stop using it?

Hi, Aaron. Welcome to the Discussions.
If you are seeing this message, that indicates a kernel panic.
There could be a problem with the FireWire drive or the card. If disconnecting the drive for a few days results in no additional panics, then it is the drive. For that, I'd contact Seagate. If not, the card becomes suspect. An examination of the panic log might prove helpful.
You can also try running Step 1 of the process specified in my "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ against the Seagate FireWire drive.
Checking the FireWire cables, trying different cables or ports, checking that the card is installed correctly, checking that you assembled the Seagate drive and enclosure correctly (sounds like you built the FW drive) are some other troubleshooting steps to consider. The FireWire enclosure itself may be defective.
See also my "Resolving Kernel Panics" FAQ. This FAQ includes step-by-step instructions for identifying and resolving some of the most common causes of kernel panics, including tips like those above.
My FAQ is a roadmap: start at the beginning and work through to the end, following the instruction in the order specified, including the "If all else fails..." section if a cause or resolution is not found in an earlier troubleshooting step therein.
You maybe unable to prevent the FireWire drive from sleeping. Secondary hard drives (second internal, as well as external drives) may not respect the "Put the hard drive(s) to sleep when possible" option if de-selected. I discuss this particular issue in my "Spinning Beach Ball Of Death (SBBOD)" FAQ, specifically in the section entitled "SBBOD spins for 30-35 seconds. You may hear your hard drives spinning up."
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

I have 100's of CDs that I have downloaded to my itunes library and they are in the library playable but they do not show up in the C drive under the iTunes Music folder under users. Why are they in the libary and not in the itunes music folder. Win 7 OS

I have 100's of CDs that I have downloaded to my itunes library and they are in the library playable but they do not show up in the C drive under the iTunes Music folder under users. Why are they in the libary and not in the itunes music folder. Win 7 OS. When I look in the library under the get info screen it says they are in the folder itunes music, under the c: drive but when I actually go to that folder to look for them they are not there....HELP!

Hello RumDog,
I think this article will help you find the media in your library.
Where are my iTunes files located?
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
Discovering and changing the iTunes Media folder location
Note: You would usually only change the iTunes Media folder location to share music between accounts on the same computer. See this article for specific steps on how to accomplish this. Also, see this article if you want to know how to move your music to a new computer.
Mac OS X: Click the iTunes menu and choose Preferences.
Windows: Click the Edit menu and choose Preferences.
Click the Advanced pane. iTunes displays the location of your iTunes Media folder.
You can then:
Note where your media folder is, such as for backing up your media.
Use the Reset button to reset it's location to the default (which is the iTunes folder).
Click the Change button to select a folder for a new location. Once you change this location:
If you make a new or alternate iTunes library, the new location will be used by that library.
Existing files will not be moved unless you choose File > Library > Organize library and choose the option to "Consolidate files."
From: Where are my iTunes files located?
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
Cheers,
Sterling

Firewire drives are un-mounting

I have a fall 2008 imac - running 10.6.3, have two external firewire drives from g-technology.
all of my data is on the external firewire drives (itunes, documents and photos). the problem is that for the last three weeks - the drives have been un-mouting randomly
I have reviewed the console logs, reset the PR-RAM and no luck. Anyone have any suggestions on how i can research the root cause?

Just a very basic idea. Are your Firewire cables in good shape? Connections OK? Has your power supply been stable lately (any brownouts, etc)? Have you recently done any updates or software installs on your iMac?
Regards,
Steve M.

Why are Firewire Drives Sleeping?

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