[Kelvin]

I've never had an external FW harddrive. I purchased an OWC Mercury Elite FW 400 200gig external harddrive.

It works fine, the performances is great but why does it spin down so often. I'll be working on something and after about 5-10 minutes the external drive spins down. Then I have to wait for it to spin up when I access the drive.

Is there a way to get the external drive to always be running until I dismount the drive?

I also notice that if my Canon ZR60 DV camcorder is plugged into the 2nd FW port on the drive and the other is connected to the iBook and the Canon is not turned on the HD never mounts on the desktop. If the camera is turned on then it mounts.

I'm on 10.3.7 using it on an iBook 1.2.

Thanks

Kelvin

[chabig]

There is a setting in Energy Saver prefs to put hard drives to sleep when possible. Try turning that off.

Chris

[Kelvin]

I think you're right. I turned it off the external harddrive is still spinning. I'll keep it this way under the power adapter settings.

Thanks

Kelvin

[brickcam]

Also, different enclosures behave differently with regards to this issue. My ext hd never seems to spin down. Shrug.

[hab]

Originally posted by chabig:
There is a setting in Energy Saver prefs to put hard drives to sleep when possible. Try turning that off.

Chris

I have 2 OWC Mercury Elite FW external harddrives (80gb @ 2 year old and 200gb @ 1 year old) and they both spin down if not in use even when the harddrive energy saver pref (OSX 10.3.7) for sleeping the hardrive is left unchecked. I just thought that this was a "feature" of the OWC drive.