[harrisjamieh]

I have set the hard drive in my iMac core duo not to spin down, by unselecting 'put hard disk to sleep when possible' in system preferences.

Why then, after about 5 minutes of inactivity, does the hard drive spin down? I know it has, because I can hear it spin down, and once it has, if I press anything on screen, I have to wait 2-3 seconds for the HD to spin up, and I get the spinny beachball for a second or two.

I know its not a major hassle to have to wait 2 seconds for it to spin up, but its a bit of a pain. Am I doing something wrong? Is there another option somewhere I have missed?

There must be a way to stop it from spinning down!!

Cheers for any help

[Spaceman Spiff]

Originally Posted by harrisjamieh

I have set the hard drive in my iMac core duo not to spin down, by unselecting 'put hard disk to sleep when possible' in system preferences.

Why then, after about 5 minutes of inactivity, does the hard drive spin down? I know it has, because I can hear it spin down, and once it has, if I press anything on screen, I have to wait 2-3 seconds for the HD to spin up, and I get the spinny beachball for a second or two.

I know its not a major hassle to have to wait 2 seconds for it to spin up, but its a bit of a pain. Am I doing something wrong? Is there another option somewhere I have missed?

There must be a way to stop it from spinning down!!

Cheers for any help

I don't know of anyway to stop the HD from spinning down, but you do know if your HD never spins down, it will wear out faster.

[Senbei]

For some reason, getting the setting to work/stick in System Preferences is hit/miss as it happens on my Quicksilver (but not my Cube) if I accidently toggle the setting.

I used to use Xupport (which seems to get it to stick all the time) but now just personally use the pmset command from the terminal when setting up new installs (just type pmset to show all available options; on 10.4.x, sudo pmset -c disksleep 0 prevents spindown).

[michaelb]

I have a similar issue on the next pane of the Energy Saver settings, with the checkbox "Automatically reduce the brightness of the display before display sleep".

Often I want the screen saver to stay in full brightness until the display goes dark (dimmed photos don't look as good if the screen dims), which unchecking that checkbox should allow. However, on my iMac Core Duo with 10.4.4 or 10.4.5, it seems to be ignored.

Going to try pmset now. If it works, thanks in advance, Senbei, for the pointer!

[michaelb]

Tried it now and it works fine.

sudo pmset halfdim 0

Stops the screen from dimming before Energy Saver turns it off completely. This means that screensavers stay at correct brightness all the way until the screen turns off.

Senbei to the rescue, thanks!