maxtor one touch III portable 2.5" HDD...anyone have this problem?

[otispunkmeyer]

i have just bought a 160gb maxtor external hdd, its a 2.5inch one so its just bus powered.

now when i plug it in, its fine, its quiet and rather quite quick

however, after a period of inactivity, it obviously goes into some kind of power save mode. trouble is it doesnt seem to be able to wake up from this state. i just get a beach ball and then i get frustrated and unplug it and plug it back in again

for inactivity the light flashes slowly, when i try to access it again the light blinks fast and you can here something move then thats it...it just stays like that. is this a drive problem or is a mac problem?

ill try it on a windows machine, though problem is i cant see it because its formatted for mac

[Eidorian]

How long do you wait for the drive to wake from sleep?

[Reflow]

Isn’t there a setting in system preference to never put HDD to sleep?

[Eidorian]

Isn’t there a setting in system preference to never put HDD to sleep?There is that as well. I also know there's a developer tool to set when your drives do spin down. Sadly, it applies to all drives and not just certain volumes.

[otispunkmeyer]

How long do you wait for the drive to wake from sleep?

ive waited a good few minutes... the finder window stops responding and even opera stops responding. the drive spins back up.... i can hear it do so, but after that nothing happens. its like the drive waiting to be told what to do next

ill put it on my windows machine in the morning. see if it does it on windows...if it does might be a faulty drive? if it doesnt then its something the mac isnt doing right.

ill leave it on tonight on normal power mode, my thinking is in better energy savings mode (whilst on the mains power) the drive is sensing when the mac is going to sleep or is idle and is then deciding to reduce its power state as well. there might be less chance of this happening if the mac isnt actively trying turn off or turn down evrything thats not being used

[mbpuserinathens]

I have the same drive and the same issue. I haven't found a solution yet. The entire system will eventually freeze until the drive is physically unplugged from the USB port.

I initially tried installing the Maxtor drivers and have since removed them. The problem persists with and without the drivers.

Now I use the drive as needed and then immediately eject it...not ideal, but it has worked so far.