Why does my hard drive run all day long when not in use

my hard drive does not sleep it continues to spin all day long

As dwb stated, if the drive is FW then it will not sleep with Mavericks unless it has its own power chip. I had to switch to USB for it to work.

Similar Messages

Why is my hard drive running all the time in Mountain Lion

My hard drive is powering up far more than it ever did with Lion, and this of course is killing battery power rapidly. Any one know why my hard drive runs so often on the new OS?
Thanks!

Great. Thanks. What I mean is my hard drive actually revs up and makes noise far more often than it ever did on Lion. It is actively engaged in a higher usage than ever before and this of course makes the battery quickly expire.
Would anyone else like to offer advice? Thanks!

Why does my Hard Drive run out of Space?

So, my Mac's HDD keeps running out of space. Here's the Specs
OS X Lion (10.7.5)
2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
8 GB Memory (2x 4GB PC3-8500)
60GB HDD
Okay, so i know its a 60GB HDD, but this thing is used for only internet surfing and General OS functions. 28GB of the 60GB is used via installed OS X, Apps, and Music. 32GB is available on start-up, but the HDD hit 0MB available after a while and the Mac's Virtual Memory caps out and I must force quit an application to continue, but Google Chrome is the only App open other than finder.
I am Computer Savy, but UNIX systems aren't my strong points. I don't know why this OS needs 32GB of VM nor why it doesn't pre-allocate it like Windows does. Is there away to Pre-Allocate Pagefile and restrict it to 12GB? I hate having to restart my computer in the middle of a task just to use it. Thank You in Advance.

Ah, so I ran that and came back with the following. The two bolded items were part of my VM machines.
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking file systemPerforming live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Incorrect block count for file Windows_7_IE8.part03.rar
(It should be 10094 instead of 179200)
Incorrect block count for file Ubuntu Linux-0.hdd.0.{5fbaabe3-6958-40ff-92a7-860e329aab41}.hds
(It should be 247424 instead of 1030976)
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume free block count
(It should be 55433475 instead of 54446025)
The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.
I'm guessing that I should be okay when it repairs these?

Why does my hard drive state I have used 500 gb when I have only used 280 gb?

Why does my hard drive state I have used 500 gb when I have only used approximately 280 gb?

Have you emptied your trash lately...
Also... See these links...
Apple ML = Increase Disc Space
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677
See Here > Where did my Disk Space go?
And Here > The Storage Display

Why does the hard drive keep crashing on 2009 MacBook Pro?

We are now on the third hard drive, the second in 5 months. The problem started after I dropped book on it, but no repairmen have suggested that has anything to do with it.

drop your books on it and you can crash your armature heads in the HD, ....HD are fragile.
I assume the first one died of age.....second from the book drop.......and the third?
endlightend
Hard drives don't fail often, but they do occasionally
They fail, and often, and new ones fail a LOT more than older ones (sounds silly, but logical)
Hard Drive Warning (all makes and models)
Ironically but logical, new hard drives are far more fragile than one that has been working for several months or a couple years. So beware in your thinking that a new hard drive translates into “extremely reliable”!
Hard drives suffer from high rates of what has been termed "infant mortality". Essentially this means new drives are highly prone to failing in the first few months of usage. This is because of very minor manufacturing defects or HD platter balancing, or head and armature geometry being less than perfect; and this is not immediately obvious and can quickly manifest itself once the drive is put to work.
Hard drives that survive the first few months of use without failing are likely to remain healthy for a number of years.
Generally HD are highly prone to death or corruption for a few months, then work fine for a few years, then spike in mortality starting at 3-4 years and certainly should be considered end-of-life at 5-7+ years.
The implication of this is that you should not trust a new hard drive completely (really never completely!) until it has been working perfectly for several months.
Given the second law of thermodynamics, any and all current mfg. HD will, under perfect storage conditions tend themselves to depolarization and a point will be reached, even if the HD mechanism is perfect, that the ferromagnetic read/write surface of the platter inside the HD will entropy to the point of no return for data extraction. HD life varies, but barring mechanical failure, 3-8 years typically.

G5 shuts down but runs all day long in Target mode

I have been having a problem with my G5 shutting down just after the star window. However in target mode the G5 runs all day and I can back up all my files. I even tried to install new system software, but it would shut down before it would finish.
What's causing this to shut down during start up... but keep running in Target mode? Bad memory? Bad card? etc.
Vic

I would run your Apple Hardware Test and see if it flags anything!
Cheers!
DALE

Why does my hard drive keep dismounting...help please I am going bonkers...

Brand new AEBS ver7 firmware
Works fine on the network and to the gateway for the internet.
Plug in a Lacie320 drive tot he USB, it sees it, it appears to work (but slow) for a while. Leave it to backup and when I return the disk has dismounted? Gone
Cant look at logs as I cannot reconnect without rebooting the router at which time the logs all are deleted.
If I try to reconnect it gives me an error connecting to Airport.
Only way out is to reboot AEBS.
If I try to delete files from the hard drive when connected it hangs, computer has timer going round forever message box is open but is not scanning files to delete, it is as if it can't see the drive and is searching...plus it has a small message box I cannot read (half off the screen), only way out of this is a physical reboot (hold power button down for 4 secs)
Now I have the drive on the USB direct to the machine, works great. So is this a firmware issue on the Airport unit?
Help please, I have spent days messing around with this and am about to give it up.
MacBookPro DualCore Mac OS X (10.4.8)
MacBookPro DualCore Mac OS X (10.4.8)

If you look in the iTunes folder on your original hard drive you should find a lot of files named "Temp File". These need to be deleted. I have not figured out what causes these or how to stop them from being made. If anyone knows the answer it would be greatly appreciated. When I delete mine it takes a very long time for them to delete, not the 2 minutes that countdown clock claims!
Dell 5100 Windows XP

Why does external hard drive have to wake up?

I understand that in Finder if I want to look at a file then it might have to wake up my external hard drive.
Why is it the case that when I perform a seemingly unrelated action - such as bringing up a dialogue box in Photoshop, viewing developer tools in Chrome, or playing the next track of a file sitting on a folder on my desktop - forces the external drive to wake up, and forces me to wait until the wakeup whilst it does so?
Yes, I want the drive to sleep as much as possible. It's only there for time machine backups which I rely on, and the less the drive is spinning the lower the chances are of the drive having an issue. So turning off "sleep when inactive" is NOT a solution.

Not sure why but I had the same issue when I was using FW drives and ML. Later I upgraded to Mavericks and changed over to USB3 drive with my new Mini and now no longer have that issue. Must be something between the OS and the type of drive but not sure what the critical component is.

Why does may hard drive rattle?

About once in every ten time when I boot my iBook G3, the hard drive rattles for 1-2 minutes then the rattling stops. Everything works perfectly before, during and after the rattling. Once it stops, it stops for good (until about 10 reboots later). At all other times, the HD is silent.
I just bought this iBook on eBay. What is causing the rattle and should I be worried about this?
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

What is causing the rattle and should I be worried about this?
I'm not sure what's causing the rattle, but if it were my iBook, I would be worried, yes.
When the rattle happens, I would shut down as soon as possible, then try booting into Safe Mode. This will take quite awhile longer than a normal startup because it does a file check and repair of the hard disk.
You will see your normal desktop. Once completely started up in Safe Mode, restart normally, and go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Click on the top hard drive icon in the left sidebar and note the S.M.A.R.T. status at the bottom right of the pane. What does it say?
Select the named boot volume in the left sidebar, ("Macintosh HD" unless you've renamed it). What is the hard drive capacity and how much space remains available on it? Repair permissions on it.
It is best to keep at least 5 GB of available hard drive space in order to give OS X enough room to operate smoothly.
I would strongly advise frequent backups to an external FireWire drive so as not to lose data if the hard drive fails. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
Good luck.

Why does the hard drive park so often?

My mac mini is a few weeks old, and works fine except the hard drive heads park (that annoying click noise) every 10-20 seconds, and it is quite annoying to hear it. I don't understand why they would design it to park so often, as it probably can't be too good for the hard drive's longetivity. Is there anything I can do or am I stuck with a dumb design like this?

If you do a search on hard drive "clunking" or clicking you'll see that it's a common problem, I'm just wondering if anyone has any updates on why it happens. I don't believe apple will replace the hard drive since it hasn't failed nor does my computer have any issues besides the audible noise.

Why does the hard drive keep spinning up when in sleep mode?

When my iMac 27" is in sleep mode I have noticed that the hard drive spins up very regularly every 4 or 5 minutes. Also when placed in sleep, the monitor takes about 30 seconds to go black. It also wakes on its own for no apparent reason. No new software has been added, only normal updates, running Lion. Time machine backup is done every couple weeks.

Power or other problems related to unexpected system sleep, shutdown, lights or fans call for an SMC reset. Read all the steps.
Before Resetting the SMC
Try each of the following steps in this order before you reset the SMC. Test the issue after completing each troubleshooting step to determine if the issue still occurs.
Press Command + Option + Escape to force quit any application that is not responding.
Put your Mac to sleep by choosing the Apple () menu from the upper-left menu bar and then choosing Sleep. Wake the computer after it has gone to sleep.
Restart your Mac by choosing the Apple () menu from the upper-left menu bar and then choosing Restart.
Shut down your Mac by choosing the Apple () menu from the upper-left menu bar and then choosing Shut Down.
Resetting the SMC for Mac Pro, Intel-based iMac, Intel-based Mac mini, or Intel-based Xserve
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord.
Wait fifteen seconds.
Attach the computer's power cord.
Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on the computer.
If the problems persist after performing the above read the following.
Open the Terminal app - it is in your Mac's Utilities folder and looks like this
Select the entire line that follows (triple-click to select it), select Edit > Copy, and then Paste it into the Terminal window:
clear; printf '\e[3J' && echo "**** Sleep/Wake events"; egrep -i 'eep\ cau|ake\ rea' /private/var/log/system.log; echo "**** Assertions"; pmset -g assertions
Copy the text of that entire window by selecting Edit > Select All, then Edit > Copy. Paste the text in a reply to this Discussion.

Why does my hard drive suddenly fill to capacity?

MAC Pro running 10.7.5
2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon / 14 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM / 320 GB HD (Stock) + 3 1TB internal drives.
It doesn't matter if I'm even using the computer. The hard drive (320GB) goes from 13GB of free space to 150MB free space and sometimes 0MB of free space and then back to 5GB then 12GB.
I've look into the messages in the console window. I see this message repeated hundreds of times.
2/12/15 9:34:22.770 AM com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud: objc[369]: Object 0x7fff7291ffb0 of class __NSCFBoolean autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking - break on objc_autoreleaseNoPool() to debug
The same with this one:
2/12/15 8:25:57.351 AM com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0: Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
Any idea if these are connected to the hard drive filling up? How do I stop it?

Your OEM 320GB is old, slow, in need of upgrade, and too small!
13GB of free space to 150MB free space
A disk drive needs 10-15% free space to function, and a system boot drive should be more like 50%.
Adobe plugins will use 100GB for cache, in addition to scratch.
The price today for even 500GB (more than you need but heck at $199 they are fast and 1/10th what they cost 6 years ago)
Copy all the non-system folders to a data drive
Clone just the system to a new drive - $85 for 2TB Hitachi would be one idea or a WD Black
Might want to upgrade your 1TB drives over time, and replace one with a drive large enough for TimeMachine - 350% the capacity for all the drives and volumes and system you might need.
System drive should have 'ample' free space, no media or user data or graphic libraries, and keep the system to a minimum, the fewer processes the better in terms of stability and performance.
At this point I wonder what log is filling the drive, maybe printer or error messages, but that the drive's directory is no longer valid or integrity and even disk repair may not be enough.
Adobe has always done better with more RAM, 24-32GB "sweet spot" even along with scratch - and because disk saves are slow and single threaded, fast storage for projects.
A Samsung XP941 ($250 + $25 adapter for 256GB) writes at 900MB/sec and goes in PCIe slot, so about 2x faster than even SATA III along with seamless boot device in any Mac Pro. 500GB is 'nice' but $499, so could serve for system and scratch and plenty of free space.
FBDIMMs are not expensive if you choose to add more, 800MHz NEMIX FBDIMM on Amazon.

Why does external hard drive show as "volume" below Hard Drive files? LR5|Yosemite 10.10.1

Why is a new folder, i.e. ext. drive, Why is a new folder, i.e. ext. drive, not showing in LR5? New folder shows as "volume" below Hard Drive files. Is this new to Maverik10.10.1? Worked normally in Maverick. showing in LR5? New folder shows as "volume"below Hard Drive files. Is this new to Maverik10.10.1? Worked normally in Maverick.

What happened is finder is as I described. A pale blue Volumes folder,
grayed out which I could not open in Finder. I"ll attach the screen shot of
the LR folders here. I did put in the original post; don't know why it was
not seen.
Ran the command in terminal and it did not change anything. The command WAS
in the terminal screen--- when I check now it is not. see screen shot
BTW, don't have drives C,G,H, J,L. these 'drives' have a few misc folders
in them. not sure when or how they got into the folders left frame
really appreciate the assistance. hope this helps us get closer
neal
On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 12:13 PM, robgendreau <[email protected]>

Hard drive runs all the time after software update

After a software update from Apple a couple of weeks ago, for some reason the hard drive now runs noisily and continuously ever since. It's never run that way in the 3 years I've had the machine. It would run briefly sometimes while using some websites, but it would always stop and quiet down once the site was done. Anybody else had this happen? Thanks - L Agnew.

Hi,
Make sure you have enough available drive space for updates. Right click your MacintoshHD icon and then click Get Info. In the Get Info window, where it says: General click the black arrow so it faces down. You will see Capacity and Available. Watch that the available drive space never falls below 15% of the total drive. (Some say 10%, but that's pushing it). Not enough drive space will cause apps to crash and freeze, including browsers.
If drive space is the issue, you need to copy files to external source. Don't forget to delete the originals on the hard disk.
If drive space isn't an issue try deleting this file. com.apple.softwareupdate.plist
/Users/YourName/Library/Preferences. Drag that file from the Preferences folder to the Trash, empty the Trash and reboot. Launch Software Update either from the Apple Menu or the System Preferences/Software Update pane.
Carolyn

Why does my hard drive rename itself?

the dock application is quitting constantly, finder quits, safari quits
and when i try and do a restore my hard drive re-names itself.

For more detail, see my user tip.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3941

Why does my hard drive run all day long when not in use

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