SpindownHD comes with Snowleopard. You should find it by means of Spotlight. If not is located in Applications/Performance Tools/CHUD/Hardware tools/SpindownHD.
You can also just use pmset in the terminal to do the same. SpindownHD is just a GUI for the HD Powermanagement and it also monitors what drive sleeps or not.
It only works for the HDD not the SSD if that was unclear.
Ok so your saying not to bother with it?
Excatly.
Is there a way to see how many cycles it has made, and how can I tell exactly if things are constantly accessing it?
Yes you just need a tool that show all the smart monitoring data. I now many on Windows but none for OSX. If you set up your HDD a bit smarter it really doesn't matter though. The unload cycles used to have a value that grew quite quickly because at some power WD started to unload the head more frequently to save power. The thresholds for SMART still stayed the same which where much older. Now some people thought their drive will die faster because and old threshold with a new power management system collided. I think WD and others would have changed it unless they thought that it wouldn't really matter in the lifetime or the head movement can handle much more unlaods.
In any case a HDD used as a data drive won't experience much of those anyhow. Only on an OS drive it might ever become a problem not on a data drive.
Wouldn't running any app constantly access my SSD if all my apps are on it? (ie iStat Menu, Virus Scan, Chrome/Safari, etc)?
iStat not really it doesn't log anything. Once in RAM it doesn't need any disc access ever. Only the smart monitoring keep waking up an hdd if it isn't disabled by just asking it for the temps and stuff.
Chrome/Safari yes sure but as mentioned only by writing to the cache and nothing else. But so what. You can remove your SSD if you only put the app on the SSD and everything else on the HDD. That is a waste of money. Everything you would ever gain is the launch time. At launch some stuff in the app package is loaded into ram where it stays but from that time on you want your working data on the SSD or else the computer behaves no faster than running of an HDD.
You launch an application once, you restart maybe once a week. If you don't have any working data on the SSD, try to remove caches and stuff too, why did you buy the thing.
Much of the snappiness comes from the apps reading small stuff of the ssd at run time. Reading cycles are not a problem it doesn't wear out an ssd ever. But if you move that data so that stuff is read of the hdd what do you gain. Nothing.
How I have done my SSD install is put it in the optical bay, re-installed OSX, set it to boot from the SSD, set the permissions so that all files are saved to the mac hd. There are NO users or user files on my SSD just strictly the OS, Libary and Apps. All files are saved to my HD. Is this correct?
Bad idea.
Put everything back on the SSD unless it doesn't fit.
What should go on the HDD is only
backups, and archived data
all movies that are meant for watching not editing
music if the library is big (if it is small it saves battery if it is on the SSD because the HDD can spin down when you only listen in the background)
pictures (can also be split IphotoLibraryManager can let you work with multiple libraries saved wherever you want. I use one for old photos and one for more recent ones. The latter on the ssd)
What shouldn't be on the HDD but the ssd
app data, caches, support folders, almost any kind of working data.
folders that have are often access but only a little. I also put the download folder on the ssd for battery life reasons. If you only download huge files you can move that to the hdd but if you often download small stuff like pdf, zips, docs, ... you just wake up the hdd for no reason.
One thing I have noticed after doing all this, is when on my HD, moving files from one folder to another it wants to COPY them not MOVE them...any ideas on that?
Not really. Maybe it doesn't understand that they are on the same partition, or they really aren't.
Finder like all file managers copys stuff that lies on different paritions because otherwise it would be a cut and paste operation.
It moves stuff on the same partition because that only requires to change an address and not "move" any actual data.
I don't have all my primary sym links on the ssd and cannot test but are you maybe just moving from one of those fake folders to another. The symlinks still are saved on the ssd and that might be the problem.
In any case just move you User folder back to where it belongs and only relocate the Movies, Pictures, Music libraries and nothing else.
