[funkboy]

My hard drive does not spin down at all on my iBook 500 when I'm using Mac OS X. What could be the problem? I'm thinking it's a process that keeps using it is somehow open - does anyone have any idea of what processes I could safely kill? Or any good reference web sites where I could learn about various unix processes?

Thanks

[mitchell_pgh]

how much ram do you have? It's important to remember that OS X has an advanced "virtual memory" and if you don't have enough ram, it will swap all day long...

from the command line, type in "top" and cut and paste that into this forum...

That would help

[funkboy]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
how much ram do you have? It's important to remember that OS X has an advanced "virtual memory" and if you don't have enough ram, it will swap all day long...

Well, it doesn't spin down even if I have the Finder with nothing else open. I have 384MB, so that should be plenty.

from the command line, type in "top" and cut and paste that into this forum...

That would help

Here they are when everything was quit except Terminal and Safari:


Processes: 37 total, 3 running, 34 sleeping... 114 threads 10:58:03
Load Avg: 2.15, 1.53, 1.32 CPU usage: 22.2% user, 10.1% sys, 67.7% idle
Networks: 22 ipkts/3K 0 opkts /0K
Disks: 0 reads/0K 10 writes/40K
VM: 0 pageins 0 pageouts

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME FAULTS PGINS/COWS MSENT/MRCVD BSD/MACH CSW
827 AppleSpell 0.0% 0:00.09 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
825 top 0.9% 0:00.46 80 0/0 468/468 74/543 3
807 lookupd 0.0% 0:00.19 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
782 tcsh 0.0% 0:00.12 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
781 login 0.0% 0:02.44 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
780 Terminal 14.6% 0:05.66 4 0/0 46/31 10/99 83
779 Safari 0.0% 0:19.44 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
602 TruBlueEnv 6.8% 14:33.93 0 0/0 4/3 166/807 330
385 automount 0.0% 0:00.10 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
340 iChatAgent 0.0% 0:00.26 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
338 DMRMapperA 0.0% 0:26.09 1 0/0 3/1 4/5 3
337 MicrosoftK 0.0% 0:17.00 0 0/0 2/1 0/6 6
331 Finder 0.0% 2:42.31 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
330 SystemUISe 0.0% 0:45.61 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
325 Dock 0.0% 0:23.38 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
322 pbs 0.0% 0:03.14 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
316 DirectoryS 0.0% 0:02.68 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
301 loginwindo 0.0% 0:24.40 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
296 cron 0.0% 0:00.12 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
295 cupsd 0.0% 0:06.84 0 0/0 0/0 11/0 4
286 inetd 0.0% 0:00.01 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
273 coreservic 0.0% 0:06.67 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
249 netinfod 0.0% 0:01.19 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
229 crashrepor 0.0% 0:00.01 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
226 mDNSRespon 0.0% 0:00.42 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
214 syslogd 0.0% 0:09.40 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
180 autodiskmo 0.0% 0:00.70 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
171 Window Man 9.7% 13:43.72 4 0/0 41/23 0/159 178
165 ATSServer 0.0% 1:32.25 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
152 SecuritySe 0.0% 0:00.44 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0
105 configd 0.0% 1:31.64 2 0/0 7/7 0/10 2
74 dynamic_pa 0.0% 0:00.00 0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0

[Developer]

Originally posted by funkboy:
602 TruBlueEnv 6.8% 14:33.93 0 0/0 4/3 166/807 330

Does it make any difference if you quit Classic, or use the "Put Classic to sleep after xx minutes" setting?

[funkboy]

Originally posted by Developer:
Does it make any difference if you quit Classic, or use the "Put Classic to sleep after xx minutes" setting?

Whoops, I must have had more stuff open than I thought. But yes, even when Classic is open, it does not change the spinning hard drive problem.

[Developer]

Originally posted by funkboy:
Whoops, I must have had more stuff open than I thought. But yes, even when Classic is open, it does not change the spinning hard drive problem.

You mean with Classic quitted?

Is that the Microsoft Office helper app you've also have open? I think I've heard it accessed the hard disk in regular intervals in earlier versions.

[funkboy]

Originally posted by Developer:
You mean with Classic quitted?

Is that the Microsoft Office helper app you've also have open? I think I've heard it accessed the hard disk in regular intervals in earlier versions.

Yes, typo. When Classic is not running, it still accessing the drive.

The Microsft helper app... possibly. Where is it on there? The MicrosoftK item? Do I just "kill MicrosoftK" to get rid of that thread? And how do I prevent it from popping up next time I boot OS X?

[Colonel Panic]

Originally posted by funkboy:
Yes, typo. When Classic is not running, it still accessing the drive.

The Microsft helper app... possibly. Where is it on there? The MicrosoftK item? Do I just "kill MicrosoftK" to get rid of that thread? And how do I prevent it from popping up next time I boot OS X?

my guess is that the microsoft process running is the office notification feature. you can select "turn off office notification" bu opening Office Notifications in Microsoft office v.x/office and selecting "turn off office notifications". (See help)

[Big Mac]

The primary reason why our drives won't spin down is because OS X always has virtual memory on, and its always swapping. OS X's memory architecture is great, but the downside is that our drives are always spinning. OS 9 was able to conserve some battery by spinning down, but all of the significant downsides associated OS 9 memory management came with it. OS 9's poor memory management was one of the most problematic aspects of its architecture. It would be interesting to know if Windows laptops (or laptops running any modern OS) ever spin their drives down during use; I would guess not.