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reemas · 04:26 PM

My WD external hard drive automatically spins down after about 5 minutes. It's extremely annoying since some programs I load, wait for the drive to spin back up.

Is there any way I can prevent this? I did not see any options for it under sys pref > energy saver.

is this normal behavior? it goes to sleep, just like when i would put my powerbook to sleep. it's a fw800 drive is that matters.

hope someone can help me resolve this issue.

Ji Eun · Oct 3, 2005, 02:18 PM

my FW external is set to spin down automatically when not in use. check to see if there's a switch on the enclosure that hasn't been mis-flicked or what have you.

reemas · Oct 3, 2005, 02:20 PM

I checked the case. there is no such switch. i have the bytecc fw800, fw400, usb2 case with an oxford chipset. what ype of case do you have?

Ji Eun · Oct 3, 2005, 02:32 PM

i have a domestic market japanese jobbie, I-O Data branded Maxtor.
the switch thing is cool though, set to always-on, auto-on/off, and off.
since i use it just for music and backing up, the only thing that lags a bit is starting a song in itunes after a spell of downtime. anyway, 'luck.

reemas · Nov 4, 2005, 04:29 PM

i'm going nuts here. the model of case i have is shown here:
http://www.byteccusa.com/product/enc...ME-740F2U2.htm

its a bytecc case. is there any software or unix commands or anything other utility i can use to keep the system from spinning the drive down so often?

the hard drive is a 250gb WD drive. please help. this is an ongoing, frustrating problem. thanks in advance!

himself · Nov 4, 2005, 06:46 PM

Originally Posted by reemas

i'm going nuts here. the model of case i have is shown here:
http://www.byteccusa.com/product/enc...ME-740F2U2.htm

its a bytecc case. is there any software or unix commands or anything other utility i can use to keep the system from spinning the drive down so often?

the hard drive is a 250gb WD drive. please help. this is an ongoing, frustrating problem. thanks in advance!

The disk itself may be going bad. If the enclosure supports S.M.A.R.T. status, you can check whether it is failing or not in Disk Utility.

reemas · Nov 4, 2005, 06:48 PM

this had been the case since i got it. as for SMART status, it says: Not Supported.

What does that mean?

himself · Nov 4, 2005, 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by reemas

this had been the case since i got it. as for SMART status, it says: Not Supported.

What does that mean?

usually means that the fw case doesn't support it... you'd have to connect the drive directly to a computer via ATA cable to get the SMART status.

ginoledesma · 12:01 AM

I doubt it's the drive. I have several external Firewire drives that also spin-down as they aren't the startup disk. The Mac has a power management control that can put disks to sleep after a certain idle time. This is activated in Preferences > Energy Saver and checking the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" option. If I recall correctly, the default idle time is 10 minutes.

If unchecking it doesn't work, you can force override the setting by using the pmset utility in the command line. Typing pmset -a disksleep 0 (10.4) or pmset -a spindown 0 (10.3 and earlier) will cause the Mac to not make the drives spin down. You will need root privileges to do this, and this setting affects the whole system (not just the user). The persistent preferences are stored in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist (10.4).

ginoledesma · Nov 5, 2005, 01:41 AM

If pmset doesn't work for you, you might want tor resort to this surefire workaround instead.

reemas · Nov 5, 2005, 01:48 AM

finally the help i needed. much thanks. im surprised more people havent complained about this before.

i have tried to uncheck the "put hard to sleep" many times before. never any luck. can you even configure it? (i.e. set the delay time to spin down). for some reason it wasn't unchecked this time, so i locked it as unchecked.

if that doesn't work i'll try the other mentioned steps. i'll post back soon. thanks a lot!

reemas · Nov 5, 2005, 02:07 PM

UPDATE:
I have managed to fix the problem. I simply unchecked the option "Put Hard Disks to Sleep When not in Use"

However, I have tried this option MANY times before. I believe the secret is in the following three:
1.) Lock the changes - by clicking the little lock icon after unchecking the option.
2.) Restart after locking the changes - may or may not be related. I restarted as I thought it would be better to let the system boot with that option as oppsed to have it run on an already running drive.

Note: The update in 10.4.3 perhaps addressed a bug or issue related to this - because prior to this I was never able to make it work.

I'm comfortable with my Mac and help many other people around here and why it worked this time is still slightly surprising.

I'm bookmarking this thread, good info here. Thanks again.