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uyman · Mar 3, 2007, 04:45 PM

Hey all,
I really want to get an airport extreme. My dream setup is to have the AE with a 500gb external hard drive to back up a desktop and a laptop and a 120gb portable hard drive connected for itunes folder and/or iphoto stuff. My main computer is my powerbook w/60gb hard drive and quickly running out of room and my desktop is a secondary Mac Mini that doesn't have a big hard drive either.

My concern is with the backup hard drive and/or the itunes/iphoto portable hard drive. How will they know when to sleep? I don't want the hard drives spinning constantly (until they fail). I have a MacAlly external enclosure that never sleeps which means I can't leave it plugged in. Anyway, I was thinking of getting a WD My Book Essentials hard drive that has autosleep feature, but will that work with the AE? Does AE always access the hard drive and keep it spinning? If i have my computer wake up at 2am to do an autobackup with Restrospect, will the hard drive wake up and then go to sleep? Are there any external hard drives (and even enclosures) that work especially well with AE?

Sorry for the long question and thanks for the answers in advance!

ghporter · Mar 3, 2007, 08:16 PM

Most enclosures are smart enough to sleep when there are no data requests for a set period of time. Mine shuts down the drive after about 10 minutes of inactivity, but spins it back up very quickly. This product connects through USB 2.0, and I find the speed more than adequate (sometimes it just zooms!).

You can find this kind of enclosure at ANY computer accessories site too-there's absolutely nothing about an external drive (either Firewire or USB) that's either Mac or PC-specific. This enclosure supports both PATA and SATA, and cost me about $40. I figured that I couldn't beat that with a stick and now I have a 300GB SATA drive in it. As I said, it sleeps the drive after a while, and the power supply is not even warm when the drive's not running. I'd give you the brand name but it's an almost anonymous brand and I can't find the paperwork that came with it.

uyman · Mar 4, 2007, 01:15 AM

Maybe the hard drive enclosure I have is just unusual. I have a macally enclosure
Products- PHR-100AC- FireWire 1394/USB2.0 External Storage Enclosure for 3.5" HDD
and when it is plugged in and connected (or not) to my computer via USB (the firewire died)j the hard drive spins constantly and warms up considerably. Therefore I only plug it in when I back up and then unplug it.

What I'm concerned specifically with Airport Extreme is that the external hard drive will be constantly accessed by airport extreme and will spin constantly. If anyone has an AE with a hard drive, I would love to know if it sleeps automatically and wakes automatically. Thanks!

ghporter · Mar 4, 2007, 09:46 AM

The Extreme should only provide the network connection; there's nothing that shows me it will independently access the drive.

MikeD · Mar 4, 2007, 05:47 PM

I have the same question. I just got the new airport extreme and with my rosewill enclosure and it seems to not sleep as usual. But I haven't had a chance to do a thourough test yet due to work schedules. I'll keep up on this thread. How has everyone elses new NAT drive setup been with the airport express?

phantomo · Mar 5, 2007, 05:10 AM

I have the same concern and would like to find the answer before getting one.

Let rephrase the question:
For the enclosure (connected to the mac directly) that do shut down power to the HD after some inactivity time, will it perform the same way (put the HD to sleep after some time of inactivity) if it is connected to Airport Extreme's USB port?

uyman · 01:33 PM

After doing more searching I found that other people are noticing that the hard drive doesn't spin down. I wonder if using an external drive that is supposed to spin down on its own, if it will spin down. And also, I'm highly skeptical that a constantly spinning hard drive is not a problem. But maybe I just don't know a whole lot.

Apple - Support - Discussions - Shared drive is constantly "active" ...
Apple - Support - Discussions - Air Disk/Shared Disk Problems ...

Apple - Support - Discussions - Any idea whether the AE spins down USB ...

MrN79 · Mar 10, 2007, 01:49 AM

I have a LaCie 250GB plugged in to my AE Flat and it hasn't shut down in a week, it's hot, but not to the point where i would be concerned.

Since it's not shutting down, and I don't access the drive that often, i'm shutting it down manually.

Gee4orce · Mar 13, 2007, 06:16 AM

I think Apple was really clever to go with a Mac Mini shaped enclosure for the Airport Extreme - it means that all those external HD enclosures and USB/Firewire hubs made for the Mini are a perfect fit for the AE. In fact, they are displaying them in Apple stores sat on top of the LaCie device. Neat.

Gee4orce · Mar 13, 2007, 06:18 AM

...as for the constantly 'active' HD - check that your connected Macs aren't attempting to index it with Spotlight ! (click on the spotlight icon, and you should see a notice to that affect).

to turn this off, use the Spotlight system preference, click 'privacy' and drag the airpot disk into this list. The indexing stops immediately.

krove · Mar 13, 2007, 06:05 PM

What's worse, constant spinning of the disk or constant overcoming of friction to get the disk spinning? I doubt there is a difference.

I hate it when I have to wait for a disk to spin up, so I'm glad the AE is designed to keep the disk accessible at all times.

ghporter · Mar 13, 2007, 07:01 PM

Hard drives are built to a) have very, very little friction in their mechanisms, either the platter axle or the head arm and b) use extremely small amounts of power to keep the platters spinning at the appropriate speed. Modern drives are built for years of operation, and the manufacturer can't tell if you expect to use the drive for a simple surfing computer or a server application, so they tend to build them more robustly than you might expect. I would personally be more bothered by the amount of power wasted by spinning the platters 23.95 hours a day than by the small usage spike from spinning them up now and then. The delay is, granted, an irritation, but a minor one.

uyman · Mar 13, 2007, 09:14 PM

So has anyone successfully gotten their hard disk drive to sleep when using with an airport extreme?

krove · Mar 14, 2007, 01:27 AM

No.

uyman · Apr 3, 2007, 03:21 PM

Well, this is what I was most worried about. I read everything I could but took the plunge anyway. Here's my setup:

AEBS
Western Digital My Book Essential 500 gb hard drive
Western Digital Passport 160gb
Printer
USB hub (powered)

Thankfully, when I'm not using the 500 gb hard drive, it sleeps on its own, when I double click on the icon on my Desktop, it spins up and is accessible. I was worried it would disconnect when not in use but it doesn't. It sits on my desktop automatically. I didn't privatize the hard drive from spotlight because I couldn't figure out how.

I know another guy got it to work by using "secured sharing with accounts." But i used the secure with airport express password. The hard drives show up on my desktop with the network icon instead of a normal drive icon, and I'm not sure what the implication is of that.

My only problem is that Restrospect Express 5 is giving me tons of error messages when trying to back up and that's frustrating. I guess I'll spring for the full version. Anyone have success with automatic backup to Air Disk? If so, with what program?

Gee4orce · Apr 3, 2007, 03:37 PM

Yep - I use SuperDuper, to back up to a disk image stored on the Aiport Disk. The only downside with SuperDuper is that you have to be logged in for automatic backups to run.