Computer slows down, when external disks spin up???

[powerbook911]

I have had this issue for years now on all my Macs.

It happens to me with my current iMac intel, which has 2 firewire drives connected to it (one 800 and one 400).

When the firewire drives randomly spin it, it sometimes makes my iMac stall a bit. Like the beach-ball will sometimes even come up, but otherwise it just like it freezes a split second while it's bringing the hard drive back up the speed.

Why does it do that, and is there anyway around it?

It makes using an external drive frustrating and hurts the beautiful mac experience.

I have 4GB of memory, very fast computer otherwise, so it's not that.

 

[RoninXI]

I like power saving but the disk issue drove me crazy too. This may not work since your HDD are external but you can try  > System Preferences... > Energy Saver > [Options] > uncheck "Put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible
That may only apply to internal disks but it made me happier not having my secondary disk have to spin up. It will not really wear on the disks any more because the spinning up from 0rpm is the hardest part. They would still go to sleep when you sleep your Mac of course.

 

[powerbook911]

Thanks. I had tried this, and I think you're right. The external disks still go to sleep sometimes.

No way around this hogging down the computer then I guess?

 

[macDonalds]

Ha!

I've recently noticed this in the last few days as well and was going to create a topic.

I too tried unchecking the "sleep hard drive" but it doesn't seem to affect my external WD My Book. It's really annoying when you're loading up a web page, hear the external drive kick on and have to watch the beach ball until the external is revved up. Hopefully someone has an answer for this.

 

[powerbook911]

Ha!

I've recently noticed this in the last few days as well and was going to create a topic.

I too tried unchecking the "sleep hard drive" but it doesn't seem to affect my external WD My Book. It's really annoying when you're loading up a web page, hear the external drive kick on and have to watch the beach ball until the external is revved up. Hopefully someone has an answer for this.

Yep, just to confirm, exactly what I experience.