External hard drive always spinning?

[jshelton]

My 320gb My Book runs constantly. Is it supposed to? I have it partitioned for Time Machine and various media. It seems like it is always running, even when TM is not backing up. It will shut off for a few seconds and then kick back on.

It is ok to leave it plugged in and connected via USB, right? Should I unmount it when I am not backing up?

 

[BlueRevolution]

I would suggest turning it off if you're not going to be using it for extended periods, like when you're away from your computer. I only turn my Time Machine drive on every couple of days to allow the backup to update.

 

[madog]

It's probably Time Machine keeping it awake as it backs up every hour.

There is a way to unmount an individual partition of a partitioned drive which you could use to unmount the Time Machine backup partition and leave the media partition up, though I have no idea if it would blow up TM (I wouldn't imagine so, but don't take my word for it).

It gets a little crazy, but if you're anything like me then that shouldn't stop you...

here

and

here


The macosxhints article appears to be less insane than the one from MR, but the latter is more recent.