[Big Mac]

Here I was sitting, composing an analytic piece in this quiet library when I noticed that my iBook's hard drive is distracting when there's no ambient noise. The big problem is, Apple removed ways to spin drives down in OS X. I booted into OS 9 briefly for something unrelated concern (something I never do) and was reminded that one could work very easily without the HD spun up. Apple doesn't give us a way to force a spin down (unless there's a terminal command I'm not aware of), and it even took away the ability to control how many minutes OS X waits until it spins the drive down. But there is a terminal command to redress that grievance. Check out this OS X FAQ for the details. Oh, and remember that once you do this, you're probably going to want to quit other applications so you can work in one that doesn't spin the drive up all the time. And disable Check Spelling As You Type in your word processor, or you'll never give your hard drive any rest.

[Dex13]

Now all I need to do is find a new hard drive for when it is spinning up.

And for those Lazy people...

Specify hard drive spin down times in Jaguar.



OSXFAQ Reader Tip By Lee Bennett



10.2 eliminated the slider to choose how long before your hard drive spins down for power management and offering, instead, just a checkbox to spin the drive down when possible. The tip is that those who don't fear Terminal can not only specify how long before it spins down, but can also have different settings depending on whether they're getting power from the charger or from a battery.


The command is:


pmset -a spindown 60


The line must be run as root (preceeding with 'sudo' should do the trick). The -a variable sets the time for all power scenarios. Using -b instead sets the time only for battery power and -c sets the time when power is supplied by the charger. The last variable, obviously, is the number of minutes desired.


Lastly, according to the pmset man page,


"All changes made through pmset are saved in a persistent preferences file (per-system, not per-user) at /var/db/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.xml"


This tidbit answered my own question as to whether the Terminal command needed to be issued at each login.


It doesn't.


Enjoy :-)


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[Big Mac]

Glad you found it useful, Dex.

[CharlesS]

I used to be annoyed by my Pismo's hard drive too, and then I replaced it with a Fujitsu 40 GB drive. The thing is nearly silent. My heart sometimes skips a beat when I hit the power button with the sound having been on mute the last time I used it so the chime doesn't sound. I hear nothing, and it really looks like nothing happened, causing me briefly to fear that the power supply has died!