How to keep Optibay hard drive in sleep mode until needed

[EvryDayImShufln]

it has been a few months and I have some updates on this issue:
4. Even if the drive is fully ejected, OS X does not spin down the drive when it wakes up from sleep. To workaround this bug, I used Sleepwatcher to execute the eject command whenever OS X wakes up from sleep. I can write up a tutorial if any one is interested.

Come to think of it this might solve some of my issues too. For some reason when I wake from sleep it spins up, then spins down after the time delay, but then starts spinning again for no reason. A manual eject works too but like had2B said automatic would be awesome!

And yeah no Parallels on this computer.

 

[ArmanUV]

I am indeed interested in this procedure. Having accomplished the ejection of my internal drive at login using some tips i read in this post and elsewhere, i now only need to address the spinup at wake from sleep. It's easy to do manually as i have the eject script sitting in the dock as an app, but automatic would be The Ritz.

PS iStats Menus was causing my spinup problems after ejection. I simply unchecked the "monitor SMART drive temps" option, and no more spinups.

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I read in a post somewhere that Parallels may cause spinups ....???

In my experience these apps cause spinups :
Parallels :confirmed in parallels forums, not solution yet.
iStat Menus : for me it kept waking up the HD every 10minutes even when all drive and temperature monitoring were off. What version are you using? I had 3.19
iStat Pro: under lion, iStat Pro only causes spinups when dashboard is activated. Therefore I now use iStat Pro instead of Menus.
Spotlight: solution in first post
OS X after wake: In summery this is what I did:

• 
  Install homebrew : http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

• 
  Install sleepwatcher : In terminal write "brew install sleepwatcher"

• 
  Add a launchctl script in /Library/Launchdeamons that invokes sleepwatcher with the -w argument and the path to a executable bash script that ejects the drive. Read Sleepwatcher's readme file if you need to. The eject script needs to executable(chmod +x /script.sh). I use this launchctl script:
  

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
  <plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
  	<key>Label</key>
  	<string>de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher</string>
  	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
  	<array>
  		<string>/usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher</string>
  		<string>-V</string>
  		<string>-w PATH/TO/EJECT/SCRIPT</string>
  	</array>
  	<key>RunAtLoad</key>
  	<true/>
  	<key>KeepAlive</key>
  	<true/>
  </dict>
  </plist>

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

In my experience these apps cause spinups :
Parallels :confirmed in parallels forums, not solution yet.
iStat Menus : for me it kept waking up the HD every 10minutes even when all drive and temperature monitoring were off. What version are you using? I had 3.19
iStat Pro: under lion, iStat Pro only causes spinups when dashboard is activated. Therefore I now use iStat Pro instead of Menus.
Spotlight: solution in first post
OS X after wake: In summery this is what I did:

• 
  Install homebrew : http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

• 
  Install sleepwatcher : In terminal write "brew install sleepwatcher"

• 
  Add a launchctl script in /Library/Launchdeamons that invokes sleepwatcher with the -w argument and the path to a executable bash script that ejects the drive. Read Sleepwatcher's readme file if you need to. The eject script needs to executable(chmod +x /script.sh). [...]

• 
  
  Sorry in advance for nagging, I followed your instructions but as I have no experience coding the bash script is giving me some trouble. I used textedit to create a .bash file with this inside:
  do shell script "diskutil eject /Volumes/EXTERNAL"
  Then chmod x'ed it using terminal to fix permissions. Then tried testing it by dragging it into terminal and hitting enter, I assume I've got the syntax wrong or something because it gives me error messages. If you don't mind would you be able to tell me the name.extension & body of your bash script for ejecting the disk?
  
  Just to throw in my 2 cents: ideally the optimal script would take into account whether the drive is unmounted or mounted upon waking up from sleep and eject it had it been unmounted (so that say you were watching a movie on the HDD it would keep spinning upon waking up from sleep for quick resuming, rather than having to unmount/remount). I'm not even sure this is possible but figure maybe somebody here's got the skillz to craft such a script.
  Thanks!!

 

[had2B]

In my experience these apps cause spinups :
Parallels :confirmed in parallels forums, not solution yet.
iStat Menus : for me it kept waking up the HD every 10minutes even when all drive and temperature monitoring were off. What version are you using? I had 3.19
iStat Pro: under lion, iStat Pro only causes spinups when dashboard is activated. Therefore I now use iStat Pro instead of Menus.
Spotlight: solution in first post

my iStat Menus version is 2.0 (build 200) and it says i have the latest version. i'm still on OS 10.6.8 if that makes any difference.

in my iStat Pro i just turned SMART update interval to 'off' and it doesn't cause a spinup

i might have a go at your Sleepwatcher solution sometime when i'm feeling brave and patient, as i think i could get bogged down cos i don't really understand what i'd be doing. thanks for providing the steps though.

 

[Biff...]

Tag for reference

 

[jon08]

I
PS iStats Menus was causing my spinup problems after ejection. I simply unchecked the "monitor SMART drive temps" option, and no more spinups.

Wow, so far this seems to be doing the trick for me! The HDD hasn't spinned up in about 15 mins... (used to do it roughly 3 mins after ejecting the HDD). So far so good, thanks!

 

[jon08]

Edit: well, not for long I guess... The spinups are there again... Lately I've noticed even when I put MBP to sleep, it will wake up randomly and then go back to sleep after a min or 2.

Weird. Though I keep the lid open if that affects anything.

 

[jon08]

Well, lately I've been getting the impression that with HDAPM disabled, the HDD will spin up less frequently....

 

[Dorv]

From my perspective, I'm much less worried about sound as I am about battery life.

I'm one of those owners of a Mid-2010 MBP owners who has had HORRID battery life since installing Lion.

So now I'm doing everything to help with the good ole' battery.

I've got the stock HDD that came with my MBP in the ODD spot, with a Bootcamp partition that I'm generally using via Parallels. It also holds a my Dropbox folder and iTunes library, that I could likely move back over to my SDD.

At this point, despite my paltry 120G SSD, I'm seriously considering pulling the HDD out and putting the ODD back in, and just making due with the storage issues.

So, I guess I apologize for my rambling

I just want my battery back