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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Pro & Power Mac > G5 hard drive in a Mac Pro

G5 hard drive in a Mac Pro
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sknapp351
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Mar 2005
Status: Offline
Apr 25, 2008 , 02:53 PM
 
Hey all,
About a year ago our G5 died, and we pulled the secondary hard drive out and put it in an external case for the time while we planned on having the G5 fixed. Apple ended up offering us a 2.66ghz Mac Pro for the cost of the G5 repair since the issue had happened a couple of times before. When we got the computer I put the G5 drive in the new tower, but what was happening was that whenever we would click on the drive icon it would take up to ten seconds for the contents to be accessible. It was like the drive was constantly asleep and had to wake up every time we needed it. This wasn't acceptable for my wife so I put the drive back in the USB 2.0 case and we have been using it that way since.
Now I have a burr up my butt that I want it in the tower if possible. I am looking to buy her another internal drive to use for Time Machine and I guess I am concerned that I might run into this problem again. Any ideas? Do SATA drives have jumpers? I am under the impression that they do not, but I might be wrong....
SAm
     
Big Mac
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Apr 25, 2008 , 03:08 PM
 
Jumpers? No. Internal drives will go to sleep when not in use for a period of time, unless you set them not to sleep. If you just occasionally accessed the drive then it makes sense that you'd have to wait for it to spin up. But if you accessed the drive and then a minute later you had to wait again then that's not normal.

Apple and Intel: As kosher as a cheeseburger.
     
Drakino
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Apr 2001
Status: Offline
Apr 25, 2008 , 04:58 PM
 
System Preferences - Energy Saver - Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible.

Uncheck that if you want to keep them spun up all the time.
<This space under renovation>
     
sknapp351
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Mar 2005
Status: Offline
Apr 25, 2008 , 05:03 PM
 
Is it possible then that the hard drive does not spin down when it is in the external case? I never have any problem with delay in that. I also assume that the startup disk never spins down since it is always being accessed for the OS. Will it hurt the drive to set the preferences to not have the drive spin down?

SAm
     
Drakino
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Status: Offline
Apr 25, 2008 , 05:13 PM
 
The external case may not support the computer telling it to spin down the drive. So it is possible that the drive is always running in the external case.

Generally there won't be much harm in letting the drive run all the time, but it does cause more power to be used, and thus more heat generated by the drive. It's kinda a tradeoff though, as spinning the drive down and back up constantly can also be bad.
<This space under renovation>
     
mduell
Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Oct 2005
Status: Offline
Apr 25, 2008 , 07:20 PM
 
Some SATA drives do have jumpers, but they're not related to spinning down on any drives I've seen.
MacBook Air (1.8Ghz C2D/64GB SSD), 23" Cinema Display, Apple Aluminum Keyboard, Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000
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sknapp351
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Mar 2005
Status: Offline
Apr 27, 2008 , 08:18 AM
 
Thanks all. I will put it back in this week.
SAm
     
   
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