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Disabling hard drive auto-sleep

macstatic

macstatic

macrumors 68010
Original poster
Oct 21, 2005
2,000
162
Norway
Is there a way to disable hard drives from automatically going to sleep mode (spinning down). Energy saver (System preferences) already has "put hard disk(s) to sleep whenever possible) turned off, so this must be done from the drive itself.

The drives in question are a 3.5" ATA drive from Western Digital (WD5000AAKB) and a 2.5" Seagate SATA drive (Disk utility doesn't tell me which drive model it is, so I have to physically open the enclosure to find out). They're both placed inside external Firewire 800/USB enclosures.
 
CubeHacker

CubeHacker

macrumors 65816
Apr 22, 2003
1,243
251
I have never heard of drives spinning down by themselves unless the OS tells them to do so. Perhaps you need to restart before it takes effect?

EDIT: I just realized that you mentioned they are in an external enclosure. I am really unsure as to how this affects the drives. Does your internal hard drive shut down as well when idle, or only the external ones? What happens if you were to hook up the external drives internally?
 
M

macdot

macrumors 6502
Oct 22, 2005
314
0
I actually have the opposite issue going on, so I'm going to tag along for this ride.
 
macstatic

macstatic

macrumors 68010
Original poster
Oct 21, 2005
2,000
162
Norway
I think my preference file was damaged, because by deleting it and turning disk sleep off (system preferences - Energy saver) the drives didn't seem to spin down. However, I really need to spend some time trying things out confirming that because I have 4 external (Firewire) drives, and while 2 are noisy and easy to hear if they've gone into sleep mode the other two are very quiet 2.5" drives.

On the other hand someone in another thread confirmed that indeed some drives spin down automatically by themselves (Western digital).

By the way, what's the deal with the disk sleep function in MacOSX? How long does it take before drives go to sleep ("Put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible"), what's the criteria Apple uses when they say ".. when possible", and can these parameters somehow be adjusted (with a third party application understandably as there is no way I can see to do it in the system preference).
picture1sw.png
 
W

windowsdan

macrumors newbie
Dec 3, 2010
2
0
Just type:

sudo pmset -c spindown 0

into the Terminal and it turns the hard drive spin down off

:)
 
MagnusVonMagnum

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
I realize this thread is old, but there is no correct answer given and that is that External Western Digital drives do NOT respect the Energy Preferences in OSX and spin down after 10 minutes of inactivity regardless of the setting (although the setting might make it happen even sooner). I have yet to find a good way around this. The standard answer seems to be to have a script or app check an invisible file on the hard drive every 5 minutes or thereabouts so that the drive never spins down. Frankly, I'd like something like the caffeine menu app to do it so that it doesn't spin down while I'm using the computer during the day, but would after I click it off at the end of the day or whenever.

So far the only app I've found for this function is "Keep Drive Spinning". I plan to test it soon.
 
Mr. Retrofire

Mr. Retrofire

macrumors 603
Mar 2, 2010
5,064
519
www.emiliana.cl/en
CubeHacker said:
I have never heard of drives spinning down by themselves unless the OS tells them to do so.
Click to expand...
"Green" drives do this. If the firmware of the external enclosure supports certain (S)ATA commands, then the OS kernel can send a "sleep" command to the HDD/SSD in the external enclosure. I heard that some enclosures have a special firmware, which suppresses the "sleep" command.
 
MagnusVonMagnum

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
"Keep Drive Spinning" appears to work fine with my WD Green Drive, but you have to remember to run it again and disable it for a specific drive if you want it to go so sleep. It'd be nice to have a menu bar type reminder with a red/green light or something. In other words, I forgot to disable it last night and so it was spinning needlessly all night long.
 
MagnusVonMagnum

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
Well, I thought "Keep Drive Spinning" was working, but this morning I found my media drive sleeping and I had not altered the setting to keep it awake. So much for that...
 
MagnusVonMagnum

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
10.8.5 broke

I just finished watching a movie with XBMC off my media drive in another room in the house and it wasn't 3-4 minutes before I came upstairs and watched as my media drive went to sleep before my eyes. That drive normally takes 10 minutes to put itself to sleep. It is OSX that puts it to sleep in 3-4 minutes if the "put drives to sleep when possible" option is selected. The thing is that it's NOT selected here but has been acting strange every since the 10.8.5 update. I think Apple broke the setting somehow and it's enabled by default even when it says it's NOT enabled. So perhaps I have to lower the setting on Keep Drives Enabled to like 2 minutes now to keep it awake?
 
B

badlydrawnboy

macrumors 68000
Oct 20, 2003
1,529
417
I just came here to post a thread about this, and found this thread instead. I'm having the same issue with a Mac Pro 3,1 after installing the 10.8.5 update. I have three internal hard drives, and two of them are spinning down despite having the "Put hard drives to sleep when possible" checkbox unchecked.

Has anyone tried the terminal command in 10.8.5?
 
Mr. Retrofire

Mr. Retrofire

macrumors 603
Mar 2, 2010
5,064
519
www.emiliana.cl/en
badlydrawnboy said:
Has anyone tried the terminal command in 10.8.5?
Click to expand...
Try a SMC reset first!

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

OS X 10.8.5 contains new power management code, which is probably incompatible with old power management settings in the SMC.

And...
From:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431

Note: If you have an Intel-based Mac notebook, see Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) for informaiton on resetting the SMC which replaces the PMU.

This article has been archived and is no longer updated by Apple.
After the reset, on some iBooks and PowerBooks, the system clock is set to 00:00 (GMT), 01 Jan 1970 for computers with Mac OS X or 00:00, 01 Jan 1904 for computers with Mac OS 9.

This article refers to Apple products manufactured November 1997 or later. For products manufactured before that date, see "PowerBook: Resetting Power Management Unit (PMU)".

About the Power Manager

The Power Manager is an integrated circuit (computer chip) that is usually on the logic board of the PowerBook and iBook. As the name implies, it is responsible for power management of the computer. It controls backlighting, hard disk spin down, sleep and wake, some charging aspects, trackpad control, and some input/output as it relates to the computer sleeping.
Click to expand...
 
nickmorzov

nickmorzov

macrumors newbie
Jan 26, 2017
1
0
windowsdan said:
Just type:

sudo pmset -c spindown 0

into the Terminal and it turns the hard drive spin down off

:)
Click to expand...

i like how everyone's having a convo about this and this champion above dropped a discrete knowledge bomb on everyone under the radar. THANK YOU for posting this!!
 
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