Hard drives keep powering down

[SimonMW]

Having a small problem at the moment. Despite unticking the option to power down the hard drives, they keep on doing just that. I'm on Snow Leopard 10.6.1. I used to sometimes have this issue on Leopard as well but never got to the bottom of it. I can't upgrade to 10.6.2 because Apple broke the ATI drivers when they fixed an issue with the Nvidia ones, so my Matrox MXO won't work with it (not Matrox's fault, entirely Apples).

It is becoming a bit irritating having to wait a number of seconds sometimes while the hard drives spin up after being left for a few seconds. When I'm video editing it is extremely frustrating. Especially as I have 7 hard drives attached.

Has anyone else come across this problem before?

 

[LtRammstein]

Care to put detail into your hardware setup?

 

[SimonMW]

Mac Pro 1,1
Snow Leopard 10.6.1
4 internal 500GB drives
G Tech G Drive Q
G Tech G Drive
Icy Box enclosure with 500GB drive
Matrox MXO

 

[sammich]

External drives may be controlled by their own firmware. My external USB WD drives all spin down after 1 minute.

Are you actually wanting to use the drives that need to be spun up, or you just need one of the internal drives? Because Mac OS X loves to spin up everything when you open a save dialog or spotlight search. If you want the peripheral drives, then it's more or less the external drives firmware, if you want to use an internal drive waiting for the externals to spin up then it's OS X's fault.

 

[SimonMW]

It is mainly the internal drives that I hear spinning up and down and causing the delays (the external ones are quieter so more difficult to hear).

It isn't that I need to use one particular drive. OS X seems to take it upon itself to spin them all down (the internal ones at least) despite the setting in the Energy Saver box.

 

[JimBoHa]

I have been having a similar problem with my external enclosures. i am using an 8 bay SATA enclosure:

http://www.xpcgear.com/sans-digital-tr8u-b-8-bay-sata-usb-jbod-hard-drive-enclosure.html

with varying size hard drives that is connected to my MBP 17 via USB.


The problem is that when i am watching movies (particularly HD movies) stored on the drives they periodically power down and then have to power up again causing the movie to freeze for about 7-10 seconds. While mot a huge issue this does get a little bothersome and i am hoping there is something i can do to fix it. Above someone mentioned that this is probably due to the external assemblies firm ware and i am just wondering if there is anything that can be done to help this.
Thanks!