FW Hard Drives and Sleep

[matt18012]

I have two firewire drives plugged into my ibook all the time. Is it better for them to remain on all the time (spinning)? I ask because when I put my iBook to sleep the drives shut down too. If it is best for them to remain spinning, how do I put my iBook to sleep without the drives spinning down. Just a note: I need to sleep my computer seveal times per day.....if that makes a difference.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[matt18012]

anyone?

 

[yellow]

There's no point in having the drives continue to spin (and waste energy and wear) if the computer they are connected to is slept.
They aren't accessible to anyone. So, I'd say, just let them sleep.

 

[risc]

I hate having a 2nd and 3rd hard drive sleeping on my Macs mainly because the Finder beach balls while the drives spin back up. If you don't find it annoying don't worry about it and let them sleep. If you can't stand the constant beach balls (by default Apple get the drives to sleep after 10 minutes) don't worry about them sleeping. I have a Power Mac G5 here with a Western Digital Raptor as the boot drive and a 320 GB WD JD drive for data and an external FW Lacie drive I don't sleep any of them, mainly because I have no interest in waiting up to 30 seconds while the drives spin back up. Other than energy saving there is no benefit to sleeping the drives.

edit: If you are going to sleep your Mac anyway of course you want the external hard drives to sleep. The problems with drives sleeping after 10 minutes and locking up Finder are only worth worrying about when you have the Mac powered up.

 

[vrinek502]

how to "insomnia" the ext HDs

I have a Power Mac G5 here with a Western Digital Raptor as the boot drive and a 320 GB WD JD drive for data and an external FW Lacie drive I don't sleep any of them, mainly because I have no interest in waiting up to 30 seconds while the drives spin back up.

How do you do that exactly?
I tried the System Preferences panel but with no luck
Do you use an external programme?

 

[plinkoman]

why would you want your drives to keep spinning when your mac is asleep?

it is definitely better for the drives to not be spinning, what made you think otherwise?

 

[vrinek502]

no no no
not when it is asleep
my workstation never goes to sleep cause that minimum slowdown in productivity can be a slipping idea

I want the externals to never sleep so I have the least possible slowdown while working pausing and resuming

btw I created a new post in Mac programming about a shell script that appends the current date to a log every minute. If that succeds I hope the drive while be always in use and it willl never go to sleep