Attached hard drive spins up along with Time Capsule

[uberowl]

I am enjoying my Time Capsule and have kept it in front of me for the last week to see how it behaves. I have noticed that when I attach my other external hard drive to it it will behave exactly like the Time Capsule. By this I mean that after 2 minutes of inactivity they will both spin down but when it is backup time in an hour both will start up simultaneously and my attached external hard drive will get to speed and instantly shut off again while the TC does it's thing.

My questions are, can this be stopped and why is it doing this? Surely it would not spin up the external drive along with the TC as spinning it up 12 times a day isn't doing the external drive any favors...

 

[xraydoc]

I am enjoying my Time Capsule and have kept it in front of me for the last week to see how it behaves. I have noticed that when I attach my other external hard drive to it it will behave exactly like the Time Capsule. By this I mean that after 2 minutes of inactivity they will both spin down but when it is backup time in an hour both will start up simultaneously and my attached external hard drive will get to speed and instantly shut off again while the TC does it's thing.

My questions are, can this be stopped and why is it doing this? Surely it would not spin up the external drive along with the TC as spinning it up 12 times a day isn't doing the external drive any favors...

It's doing it most likely because the Time Capsule polls the external, who's chipset then spins up the drive in response to the signal.

I suspect there is no way to alter this behavior short of Apple releasing new firmware. A different external HD with a different chipset may react differently.

 

[uberowl]

It's doing it most likely because the Time Capsule polls the external, who's chipset then spins up the drive in response to the signal.

I suspect there is no way to alter this behavior short of Apple releasing new firmware. A different external HD with a different chipset may react differently.

Ah, thanks for that. Both my LaCie hard drives do this so it might be a LaCie thing...

I think I will just change my Time Machine backup frequency to 3 hours and attach both my external hard drives to the Time Capsule. Spinning up ~4 times a day isn't too bad.