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System "Lethargy" with external HD
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jul 2005
Status:
Offline
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I have a 160Gb Maxtor external Firewire HD on my G5 iMac. It's great for backup.
However, it seems to me that many of the open file dialog boxes are MUCH slower than they used to be before I got the HD.
I don't understand why Mac OSX ( I am at 10.4.5) tries to contact the external HD, unless I am actually trying to access it.
This seems pretty odd. Is there any way to set a preference to keep the system from accessing this drive until I need to?
Thanks
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Baninated
Join Date: May 2005
Location: England
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are you using FW 400 or 800?
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Offline
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I don't know.
But my problem isn't associated with the 'speed' of the transfers, it's the time the system takes to put up file related menus and I suspect, any other file activities having to do with more than one volume.
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Senior User
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Sin City�, USA
Status:
Offline
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This is most likely being caused by the fact that Mac OS X polls every attached mounted volume whenever you try to open or save a document. This can even happen when your boot drive is inactive for a while.
A couple of ways to combat this (normal behavior, BTW) is to set your system to never sleep and never spin down drives in the Energy Saver section of System Preferences. I personally am not crazy about this as I want little used volumes to be able to sleep as I leave my Mac on 24x7. What I do is un-mount any backup or redundant volumes and only mount them (Using Disk Utility) when I am backing up. This, while not totally eliminating spin-up delay, does help.
Hope this help you out.
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To dislike Sinatra is a sign of highly questionable taste. To dislike the Beatles is a serious character flaw.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
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Originally Posted by crooner
This is most likely being caused by the fact that Mac OS X polls every attached mounted volume whenever you try to open or save a document. This can even happen when your boot drive is inactive for a while.
That does not seem to be true in all cases. My second internal drive does not get polled due to Open and Save dialogs. It does not spin up unless and until it's accessed.
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"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
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Senior User
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Sin City�, USA
Status:
Offline
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
That does not seem to be true in all cases. My second internal drive does not get polled due to Open and Save dialogs. It does not spin up unless and until it's accessed.
Interesting... it *may* be an issue isolated, for the most part, to external FireWire drives. The OP was, indeed, referring to a FireWire drive.
I’m sure there are many here that can shed far better light on this than I.
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To dislike Sinatra is a sign of highly questionable taste. To dislike the Beatles is a serious character flaw.
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