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Frequent Spin-up of External FireWire Hard Drives?

T

Tom Dahl

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 9, 2009
65
0
Massachusetts USA
I have some iMacs (running 10.5.6) each with an external direct-connect FireWire hard drive. About every ten minutes, these drives will spin up for a minute or two, then spin down again. I'd like to know why! Can anyone help to explain what is using the drives, or how I might check?

Background: The drives are set as Time Machine backup volumes on their respective iMacs. I assume the frequent accesses I observer are not related to Time Machine (because the accesses are much more frequent than the hourly backup schedule). The drives are not remote-mounted anywhere.

In System Preferences I have the check-box enabled to "put hard disks to sleep when possible." I am very tempted to turn that off, because I'm worried about the stress being caused by spinning up and down these drives multiple times per hour.
 
Spinning drives up/down can arguably cause more wear than just leaving them running, I suppose. Are these drives being indexed? I have a drive that also spins up and down, although not this often.
 
I also have this issue with my two external (USB2) WD-drives. Would like to know why too.
 
It's spotlight ...

If you want the drives to be indexed by spotlight, then they will get spun up periodically to get checked for changes. Otherwise, go to System Preferences->Spotlight->Privacy (tab) and add the FW drives to the list of places that Spotlight should not search.
 
thanks, i'll try that. my external is only used for time machine, but even when time machine isn't backing up, the drive spins up pretty frequently, as others have mentioned.
 
I notice it whenever I go to save a file, even though I am not using the external disc, Finder seems to want to spin it up anyway.
 
I have an external FW800 HDD that I use to back up my HD every week (NOT using Time Machine). That's all I use it for, so when I'm not backing up, I shut it off - literally. After my weekly back-up, I unmount the drive, then unplug it from my iMac, then I switch it off. Voila! silence....:p

Rich :cool:
 
An update: I've had the spotlight search disabled on the external FireWire drive for a couple of days now, and I still see the drive spun up every ten or fifteen minutes. So apparently it is not Spotlight's activity accessing the drive; I wish I knew what was doing it.
 
sudo lsof -r /dev/diskXsY where X is the drive number and Y the partition (can be found in disk utility - Information - Disk Identifier)
 
mstam said:
sudo lsof -r /dev/diskXsY where X is the drive number and Y the partition (can be found in disk utility - Information - Disk Identifier)
Click to expand...
Thank you for the lsof command. Some files seem to be open all the time; it seems that there are touches in three categories: Backups, Spotlight, and fseventsd.

Here are the extra files open when the FireWire volume spins up:

mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 2731 149 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/0.indexGroups
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 8 188 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/0.indexCompactDirectory
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 2056 187 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/0.indexDirectory
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 32768 148 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/0.indexIds
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 32768 166 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/live.0.indexCompactDirectory
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 131584 165 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/live.0.indexDirectory
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 349526 160 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/live.0.indexGroups
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 4194304 159 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/live.0.indexIds

I have added the volume to Spotlight's Privacy tab, so I don't know why Spotlight is touching it. Might I need to reboot?
 
Tom Dahl said:
Thank you for the lsof command. Some files seem to be open all the time; it seems that there are touches in three categories: Backups, Spotlight, and fseventsd.

Here are the extra files open when the FireWire volume spins up:

mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 2731 149 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/0.indexGroups
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 8 188 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/0.indexCompactDirectory
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 2056 187 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/0.indexDirectory
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 32768 148 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/0.indexIds
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 32768 166 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/live.0.indexCompactDirectory
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 131584 165 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/live.0.indexDirectory
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 349526 160 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/live.0.indexGroups
mds 47 root txt REG 14,5 4194304 159 /Volumes/Lois/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/F6FD485C-03E3-4CF2-8A04-C3377B75139E/live.0.indexIds

I have added the volume to Spotlight's Privacy tab, so I don't know why Spotlight is touching it. Might I need to reboot?
Click to expand...

Try:
killall Spotlight
(to restart Spotlight)
 
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