HDD Spin Down

[airattack111]

Hey guys,

I installed a crucial SSD where my cd drive normally goes. Deleted my torrents (hehe) and cloned the Seagate Momentus HHDD to the SSD. With the exception of the Pictures, Movies, and Music folders which are staying on the spinner.

I then deleted everything off of the spinner except for the 3 folders, and went in the terminal and pointed them to the spinner.

I went into spotlight, and turned off indexing of the spinner. Sometimes the hard drive does still spin up, mainly when starting the computer, and sometimes randomly.

How do I set it to where the Hard drive only spins up when I'm using one of the three folders?

PS: I'm loving the solid state, I definitely notice a huge improvement in speed and the laptop is much quieter.

 

[freeskier93]

You can't expect the hard drive to only spin up when you access it, there are reasons for the OS to spin it up. The best you can do is set it to put drives to sleep as soon as possible. I did something in Terminal to sleep the drive after one minute of inactivity. You don't realize how loud and obnoxious HDDs are until you use a solid state drive.

 

[airattack111]

Ah yes I did the one minute thing also.

It's permanent? Or do you have to do it after every restart?

 

[freeskier93]

It's permanent.

 

[airattack111]

Thanks! I can live with that.. haha

 

[Philly]

Can somebody expand a bit on using Terminal to set the spin down time of your HDD?

For instance, if I set mine to spin down after 1 minute;

1 - Is there a way to reset it to the default? (is there even a default?)

2 - If an application such as Transmission is using the HDD for storage and the drive is set to spin down after 1 minute, will it override the app?

3 - What's more damaging to the HDD, constantly spinning or constantly spinning down..? ...if you get what I'm asking.


Any knowledge on this subject is greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[freeskier93]

Can somebody expand a bit on using Terminal to set the spin down time of your HDD?

For instance, if I set mine to spin down after 1 minute;

1 - Is there a way to reset it to the default? (is there even a default?)

Sure. I don't know what the default time is, but if there is one just set it to that time via Terminal using the same steps. Or readjusting it through System Settings might reset it.

2 - If an application such as Transmission is using the HDD for storage and the drive is set to spin down after 1 minute, will it override the app?

The system will only spin the drive down when there is no disk activity. AKA, if an app like terminal is reading/writing to the drive the system will no spin it down. If a period of 1 minute elapses with no disk activity then the drive is spun down.

3 - What's more damaging to the HDD, constantly spinning or constantly spinning down..? ...if you get what I'm asking.


Any knowledge on this subject is greatly appreciated, thanks!

It's actually harder on a drive to constantly spin up and down, however, with a mobile device power savings are typically valued more and in the case of a secondary drive noise can be a factor. For me it's really about the noise, never realized how loud HDDs are (especially since mine is 7200 RPM) until I installed the SSD.

I wouldn't worry to much about longevity. I have my secondary drive set to spin down after 1 minute of inactivity, it's about 3 years old now with no signs of issues (of course failures can happened unexpectedly). Just be smart and keep backups.

 

[Philly]

Sure. I don't know what the default time is, but if there is one just set it to that time via Terminal using the same steps. Or readjusting it through System Settings might reset it.



The system will only spin the drive down when there is no disk activity. AKA, if an app like terminal is reading/writing to the drive the system will no spin it down. If a period of 1 minute elapses with no disk activity then the drive is spun down.



It's actually harder on a drive to constantly spin up and down, however, with a mobile device power savings are typically valued more and in the case of a secondary drive noise can be a factor. For me it's really about the noise, never realized how loud HDDs are (especially since mine is 7200 RPM) until I installed the SSD.

I wouldn't worry to much about longevity. I have my secondary drive set to spin down after 1 minute of inactivity, it's about 3 years old now with no signs of issues (of course failures can happened unexpectedly). Just be smart and keep backups.

...thanks!